Quoting: LeopardNo , it is not. There are many people out who use Windows partition for only Photoshop like programs and gaming on Linux partition and buying Linux only games.

So ; Wine users are mostly much more worse than dual booters.

So, we'll disagree. As long as you dualboot, I also don't see your criticism of Wine as valid even according to your approach. Start with replacing dualbooting with Wine for everything that you have exclusively on Windows, and ditching everything that doesn't work otherwise. Then you can start criticizing Wine as something worse than native approach. Otherwise you are losing forest behind the trees.

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Quoting: LeopardProblem is not the dual booting , problem is feeding Windows market.

The major step there is to stop using Windows for good. That automatically reduces Windows market. So dualbooting is way bigger issue if you are concerned about reducing Windows market. By using Windows you are paying money directly to MS.

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Quoting: KelsThe interface for that looks really cool, and kinda dominates the visuals. It'd be interesting to see what a modern dev would do with that sort of concept.

Yep, it's light on graphics but quite heavy on the interface and it has tons of items, monsters, spells, abilities and guilds.

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Quoting: LeopardIs PUBG runs with it? No

Is Fortnite runs with it? No

Is League of Legends runs without crashing? Maybe today , unsure for tomorrow

DRM tends not to work in Wine, but what effect does it have on anything? Developers of said games don't have interest in Linux, and if Wine doesn't support them, it means such cases are irrelevant to the idea, that Wine somehow hurts native Linux releases. So your example only disproves such claims.

Wine does support many games in practice, so what Xpander said is correct, that Wine helps people switch to Linux and ditch Windows, thus weakening the catch 22.

And also, let's ask critics or Wine, are they dual booting or not? If they do, they should consider using Wine instead.

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Quoting: grumpytoadProducers already do use emulation (VP, wine) to sell their games to the Linux market, and this raises linux market sales, visibility, platform mind-share, while lowering the cost of development and support.

Not really emulation, but translation (source or static / binary), that's also called "wrapping". But overall yes, increasing ease of such wrapping improves probability of more games, not the opposite.

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Quoting: jensC'on, there is no growth, or just minimal growth

There were a few surveys that showed that developers are making more Linux games than in the past. Native engines are progressing well. All that is movement forward, and good one at that. I don't see Linux gaming in some dire need of saving today. More push from serious players would be of course helpful, and it doesn't mean everyone should sit idle. And Wine is actually helping move things forward here.

Quoting: jensI'm less optimistic, they will just concentrate their efforts on Mac/iOS and leave Linux for good.

Well, time will test their dedication. There are enough dedicated developers, who are already interested in supporting Linux gaming today. See a new article about inXile for example: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/03/hands-on-with-bards-tale-4-the-first-proper-series-entry-in-30-years/

So Linux gaming doesn't depend on Feral, unlike some think.

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Market share doesn't matter currently. Despite its growth, legacy publishers still don't care, because they are legacy and backwards thinking. So market share alone won't help (unless we get to some huge double digits I suppose).

And about Feral and Co., it was discussed already. If they want to compete with Wine, they can open source their wrappers. Otherwise it's indeed questionable why their specific wrappers are any better, because they likely won't be in the near future.

However, as was also pointed out many times, the value is not just in the wrapper, but in the actual expertise. If Feral can help offering supported versions (no matter with what wrapper, it can be same Wine+dxvk), then they can have contracts from companies that do want to offer supported versions, but for some reason still can't do it themselves. It won't have any effect on those who don't want to. So again, Wine has no negative effect on any of this, it only has a positive effect on the ease of wrapping itself. And if such companies will switch to do their own wrapping because of its increasing ease - all the better. Feral and Co. will find something else to do. Like making their own engines or games :)

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Quoting: NeverthelessIt's easy to say you don't have the resources, even if you had them...

Sure, if they are looking for excuses, they'll find some. And Wine isn't relevant here, since they are excusing "not offering support at all", not "not releasing native version". Analyze the difference.

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Quoting: NeverthelessIt's just not my point. Linux is the last open gaming platform to be. While it is good to have most games playable on Linux, it is essential to have most of them natively on Linux, because otherwise no one will see a Linux market anymore.

Again, this is addressed with engines, Wine has no impact on that. Wine only impacts wrapped games market. So far I don't see any indication of native engines support for Linux slowing down because of Wine progress.

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Quoting: NeverthelessThere are already developers saying they can't deliver a Linux version, but hey, the game works on Wine, why don't you just use that instead? There will be more of those in the future, PLUS Feral and Aspire have harder times porting native Versions.

There are also developers who always claimed they can't support Linux version because they have no time / resources / etc. Wine doesn't change their attitude, they simply don't want to support it.

Wine as an excuse is quite silly, if their own engine supports Linux natively. It's simply rephrasing their "we have no resources for it". How would they have gotten more resources, if Wine wouldn't have existed?

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