I like to avoid Steam as much as possible, due to my stance against DRM. The games run...decently on WINE, but it's not ideal. Native versions will always be superior, and help to advertise the platform more to gamers and general users. If people don't see that Tux symbol, they'll assume they can't play the games they want on Linux.

A port with extremely poor reviews on Linux, because apparently the port (which was just a low/no-effort winelib-like (eON) port) performs worse than running the Windows version on Wine (and besides, it doesn't include the editor). I haven't played it beyond testing whether or not it even works at all myself, but I have no reason to disbelieve. Because it was unpopular, CDPR said they wouldn't be doing that again (wow, make a crappy port, and expect it to be popular?). It was made during a time when Steam was pushing Linux hard, and CDPR wanted to jump on the bandwagon. In the meantime, proton means that everybody who paniced and thought they now needed to support Linux now realize that they can just stick to Windows.

edit: since I didn't make it clear above: native "ports" are not always superior to just running in wine. Especially when major features (such as the editor) are completely missing. Not that the editor works on wine, either (at least for me, as of my last tests).

edit2: another thing I forgot to say is that I don't think CDPR has any Linux staff, and does not intend to get any (they announced that they did make "fixes" to make some of their stuff work on proton -- that's pretty much what I expect to be the extent of their "Linux suport").

Perhaps you could link to some of these reviews? I played the Linux port of Witcher 2 a few months ago and, from a performance standpoint, it ran very well on my GTX 1050. Frame rate seemed to be very good, smooth. There were very few, if any, bugs or crashes that I recall. I played through the entire game and would certainly use the Linux port if I play it again.

I agree 100% with this thread - bring Witchers 1 and 3 to Linux CDPR, please!

I used to see such statements all the time. I don't really feel like looking for it again. The first few links I get from duckduckgo should suffice. Funny thing about performance issues: throw a newer/faster machine at them, and they tend to go away. Many of my own games I originally marked as "too slow" are now playable. Did you compare performance between the native port and wine? Were you able to run the editor?

Why, what possible difference do you think you or I or any other can make in a thread like this? Absolute zilch.

GOG already know what all the Linux users want, and they simply don't do much of it, because of all the reasons that have been mentioned many times over here in many threads ... the chief one likely being lack of financial motive, and the next being the effort required, when they already don't have enough time or resources to do all the other stuff they should be doing, so Linux versions are going to take a very poor low second place ... and frankly will probably never occur.

I'd qualify that as 'some' gamers ... and no a Linux port wouldn't, as the vast majority of gamers who come to GOG, don't give a rats about Linux or Linux versions of games.

I say all of that as someone who does care about Linux versions ... just I am being logical and realistic.

If you somehow want to add to the clamor for Linux versions of those games and others, then just vote in the various number of related wishlists here. GOG are more likely to pay attention to those, as it shows numbers of customers who want them.

https://www.gog.com/wishlist

Outdated information. It performs practically identical to Wine+dxvk. They did have performance issues initially, but they quickly fixed that.

Fine. If you say so. I doubt it, given that I have heard complaints for years after I bought the game in 2015 for some stupid reason (and there haven't been any updates of the game binary since), but I don't have the time or desire to test myself. I have better games to play. Many of which have actual, native Linux ports without a direct3d translation layer.

This doesn't change the fact that it's a winelib port, and they didn't bother "porting" the editor; CDPR writes Windows software, exclusively, and expects others to do the porting for them. Now that proton exists, they have no incentive to port anything to Linux. Why pay someone to do a wine port if they can get it for free?

As far as I know, VirtualProgramming's eON is not based on Wine, it's an independent DX over OpenGL wrapper.

And I posted some benchmarks here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/4951/

DXVK is slightly better but not by a lot.

That depends. Native versions would have better performance. So if they care about quality, they can make ports. Steam Deck should also give them more incentives.

Wine/Proton are band-aid solutions, they will never be 'superior' to a native Linux version. Sure it opened the gates to a ton of games that are unfortunately shackled to Windows, but they shouldn't be relied upon for everything. Ideally, companies should still make an effort to port their software to Linux natively. But that seems to be a realm exclusive to passionate indies and the odd AA release here and there.

A lot of people looking to use Linux will just take one glance at the library of games native to the platform, and find it severely lacking compared to Windows. From there, they may make the decision 'not' to switch without knowing that Wine or Proton even exist. Even if they 'were' aware of those solutions, they might think it's complicated or cumbersome to setup and decide to stay with Windows. That's the truth. Your typical gamer won't even consider switching, because they believe Linux is annoying or tedious. Native Linux versions of titles like The Witcher III and Cyberpunk 2077 would be great additions, and might inspire some to leave the Microsoft gulag.

Why are you telling me this? Do you think I like wasting effort on getting things to maybe run at least partially on wine today, only to stop working tomorrow? Do you think I like cheap-ass API shims as "native" ports? Go tell CDPR, if you think they give a damn. I don't think they do. The CDP group in general doesn't give a damn about Linux, period. In fact, I'm pretty sure they regret ever "supporting" Linux to begin with. Go start a twitter storm, as that seems to be the only thing that motivates companies these days. They certainly don't read the gog forum.

Yet they contracted CP2077 port for Stadia which is Linux work. So they did care then? I'd argue Steam Deck and desktop Linux in general is a bigger gaming market than Stadia.

I'd imagine Google paid them a sum to port Cyberpunk to Stadia, especially since they were desperate for new users. CD Projekt Red seems to be after short-term gain more than long-term success, which given the fact that they are essentially owned by (((Goldman Sachs))), is no surprise.

No, they didn't. They maybe cared a little about Stadia: enough to get someone else to do the work, at least. Stadia is not desktop Linux, even if it shares a lot in common. Stadia has its own API, and covers things which are not covered by normal desktop Linux, and probably does nothing to support XDG guidelines (and other little things that aren't covered by just the base AV APIs -- many Linux binaries have trouble going full-screen properly, for example). Stadia will not be the savior of desktop Linux gaming. At best, it might cause a lot of developers to support Vulkan instead of DirectX even under Windows, which would at least make wine's job easier. For CP2077 in particular, there is no Linux Galaxy, and probably never will be.

And, while Steam's Linux initiatives did, indeed, increase the number of native Linux games, proton (not so much the wine aspect, but the single-click convenience aspect) has pretty much stopped/reversed that progress. Steam Deck will not be the savior of desktop Linux gaming, either.

Not for free. So they cared enough.

As I said above, the market for Stadia is smaller than for desktop Linux, including upcoming Steam Deck.

Unless math changes drastically recently, Goldman Sachs owning less than 7% of the shares definitely don't mean that CDPR are essentially owned by them.

Exactly Stadia is just "another-console" that happen to run on a Linux'ish OS rather than Linux, it's a controlled environment, with controlled hardware and controlled OS and you don't have any first or second level support to provide as it is handled by Google. So the cost of porting and support are much lower.

Yes, I know it's probably not representative but I know plenty of peoples who are interested into buying a Steam Deck (me included)... but none of them plan to run Steam on it or do "Linux" gaming. They are interested by it as a rather cheap emulation platform able to emulate modern console games.