Making packages and distributing them? Yes, that's trivial. But what your poster in that thread doesn't account for is that we do a lot more than that with classic games. I'm not the guy in charge of testing, mastering, and building games, but let's just look at what *I* can think of that makes Linux release a very difficult proposition:

1: Testing. What distros do we support? There are 10 "fairly common" ones (Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSuse, Fedora, CentOS, ArchLinux, Debian, Slackware, FreeBSD and, um, I've forgotten a couple). Hardware? What level of updates? Only FOSS drivers, or can we take some closed source stuff? Once we've decided on a test bed, we still have to check the games. Do they boot? What about oddball games like, say, Theme Hopsital? There's a version-specific DOSBox-related fix there. Does it in work in any distro? In all of 'em? Managing testing across the 3 OSes we support is tough and requires a lot of time, effort, and money. How much more complex will 10 more OSes make it?

2. Support. Having problems getting your game running? We'll help you out. Contact Support and they'll try to diagnose your problem and offer a solution--but they only know how to fix common (and less common) Windows problems. LInux is famous as the hacker's OS--that is to say, the OS of people who like to do odd things with their hardware. If someone contacts Support because he can't get his copy of Fallout running on his Raspberry Pi with a video out that's connected to a six-panel e-ink display and he wants his money back, well, that puts us in a bad spot.

3. Maintanence. Across those 10 common distros, how often does one of them update? Quarterly? Monthly? I don't know, but the answer is certainly "often". What do we do if slackware updates and breaks the functionality of a glide wrapper that we're using for all of our games? Or if FreeBSD removes a driver from the kernel that we depend upon in order to run some games? Just planning for Windows 8 is a minor headache--ask Tolya about his test plans if you want to hear an earful--but planning for a wide spectrum of OSes that have constantly changing sources and see major feature and bugfix releases more than once a year? Man, that's a Herculean labor.

This is a thumbnail sketch of the challenges that await a digital distributor who wants to release games on Linux and who also wants to provide proper support when doing so.

Of course, we could just release a client, sell the games, and figure that you can sort the rest out yourself--I'm sure some businesses may even consider that a successful business model--but that's not really the GOG way of doing business. ;)

:: wave ::

But you did bring up a good point I'd forgotten: I don't even know if we have the rights to sell games for Linux. How much would that cost? How long would that take to recoup?

Yeah, not simple at all.

THAT SAID: we know that some of you want it, and as you can tell from the fact that i was able to spout all of those questions off relatively quickly (despite losing my first draft at my reply thanks to the site hiccup an hour ago), we're thinking about it. No promises, though. Linux is, what, 1% of the market for desktop computers? That's a lot of work for a very small audience. It's still quite possible that, after evaluation, the answer will still be, "No, sorry, This will cost us more money than it makes."

I'm leery of providing a third-party's evaluation of a game's functionality on our website, because that starts us down a slippery slope:

"The website you linked to says that this game runs with no issues. It doesn't run for me. I want my money back."

It seems, if we linked to AppDB, we end up with the worst of both worlds: unhappy customers and a support/test team that is wholly unprepared to deal with any issues that may arise. Not to mention publishers coming to us and saying, "It looks an awful lot like you're telling people that your game is supported in Linux. This is funny, because you aren't paying us for Linux distro rights."

Well, the question in this thread was specific to Linux. The same objections that come up with Linux come up with Mac, albeit at a somewhat reduced scale. Just as we've not announced anything about Linux support (although, as you can tell, we've been considering it), we're not announcing anything about Mac either.

And yes, we provide support for newer games, too. Having a problem with Grimrock? Feel free to ask the guys on Support. They'll help you out. ;)

Gadzooks! I should drink my morning tea before writing replies.