I am sorry but I have to reply to this! I have been a long support of your products, but you need to stop the early 2000 style response to Linux support.
Forget the useless statistics, they do not show a true picture of what is going on in the land scape right now.
Linux is not tricky in terms of what you support. Support Ubuntu, as it has the biggest share of the market place. Providing a .DEB package or generic binary package alone should suffice. The Arch etc users have already got Steam working without issues. So support the biggest portion and the others will work on porting the package. Additionally creating a standard binary installer like some companies have done will also help.
Again this is a view of a poorly researched response, Debian and Fedora are *not* the most popular and have not been for a very long time. Ubuntu is (yes some people don't like it) becoming the choice for desktops on Linux and some of its downstream distros like Mint too. Again support Ubuntu and many other distros like Mint will work fine. Yes and again Steam is already doing that.
"Most linux users expect stuff to be free" This is insulting and quite frankly wrong! Gaming on Linux is bigger than ever and is just growing month by month. We want to pay for games and the Humble Bundle shows that. If a platform can support development on games, you'll just end up with more business as indie developers flock to a working development SDK/AGK. On the Humble Bundle Linux users on average pay over $10, compared to Windows and Mac users paying around $6 for the bundle. The days of just seemingly free loading on anything that does not cost money does not convey the average Linux user.
Assuming that all business models work on software app stores is also wrong. The Windows platform has worked well for years without one, with Steam etc performing the game side of game delivery, if people prefer to go down that line. Being that Desura and Steam now have working support for Linux games, does this not sense to get in on it?
Unity, a major gaming development platform, yes at the moment does not allow development on Linux, but port straight out to Linux natively have realised that Linux is only going to get bigger and people are prepared to give out their cash. Torque already do too.
After all this, what I am saying is the comments are outdated and frankly wrong. If you don't at least allow for export of games to Linux, then you are losing out on a market place that will only get bigger. Indie developers will just go for other means of making their game. Check out Kickstarter, which you yourselves are using for re-writing FPS, games support Linux over a certain amount or even straight out of the door.
Please don't ignore the Linux market place..
Quote: "Approximate desktop usage as of december, http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp I use these statistics as most Apps these days are downloaded, and this is an approximate set of values covering users who use their devices to access the internet.
81.3 of the market goes to Windows based platforms.
8.7% of the market goes to MacOS
4.7% of the market goes to Linux based platforms.
2.2% of the market goes to mobile OS's
When you consider that the lions share of the market belongs to windows, that becomes the first obvious priority for support.
The next most popular is MacOS which is also supported.
4.7% goes to Linux. Now linux is a tricky one for several reasons.
1) There are various competing distributions, which should be supported? The two major ones are Debian and Fedora. With various other versions split between Open SuSe, Ubuntu, and there are yet more systems such as Arch Linux. That 4.7% is split across so many distributions, and several core bases.
2) Most linux users expect stuff to be free. This isn't a well established market place for paid for apps. Even apps with adverts are typically avoided by the community. Ubuntu is one of the few that comes with any kind of app store system.
The smallest portion of the market 2.2% seems to goto Mobile OS's.
The mobile OS market, iOS and Android mostly do very well with app sales. It is a heaven for indie developers, several small groups have become influential thanks to these market places.
I know that TGC would love to support every possible market place out there, but at the moment TGC supports the 4 most profitable markets for indie developers. I'm not sure anyone would really become a success using the pretty limited Linux marketplaces. "
