I took the liberty to correct you for the sake of 1.Conversation correctness (factuality) 2.Your tutoring (so you don't spread incorrectness elsewhere).
Please don't take personally what I wrote here. Don't take a grudge against me for it.
# PART 1 / ? #
Gogeous: The editor and mods support is possibly related with STEAM bindings. It seems that games from last years were born tied to STEAM framework, and port it surely is complex and not profitable.
First of all you have to understand one thing.
I assume you don't come from game dev world? (even some garrage never-to-be-public projects count)
Then it's only natural for you to not realise some things.
In game dev you create your project totally devoid of DRM from the very beginning.
Any form of DRM is always an afterthought and any such wrapping is made at the very last distribution stage (so late that there are plenty of cases when devs forgot to wrap the game with DRM and some patch version got released without the DRM cough Doom Eternal cough).
Removing "steam DRM" is thus not only trivial but basically ALREADY DONE for any SANELY developed games (there are some where people didn't have sane approach and thus decided to nuke the old builds and thus don't have them anymore).
As for steamworks, first of all we don't have achievements on Linux on GOG, so that immediatelly throws out of the window big chunk of GOG API integration. We also don't have overlay. Puff. Gone.
What's next?
How about the fact that this game has achievements implemented for GOG Windows build?
You know what that means?
It means that the original devs ALREADY took their sweet time to crawl through that abomination of an API (lack of public documentation [Steam has one] of the API combined with it's uber awkwardness makes it a burden) and already worked with GOG to implement it thus they already have necessary experience to do that AGAIN (ergo for example for port for another system cough Linux cough) should it be necessary / desired.
Gogeous: Also, GOG and its client do not offer support for mods, at least for now, so there is not an alternative for developers.
Please don't confuse mod support with Steam Workshop. Those are two entirely separate matters that don't go on par with each other.
Steam Workshop is merely convenient integrated toolset for mods distribution, support and integration.
It is not necessary to use it for the game to be able to use ANY mods.
Gogeous: About the Linux versions, there is some game on GOG that do not offer existing previous Linux versions of the game, but has the actual version Linux installer available on GOG, because it has being implemented with it on mind.
Care to give any direct examples?
Gogeous: Another reason, is that some Linux versions of previous games tend to be buggy, because Linux were not mature
You are entering some dangerous territory with these claims.
The bugginess of past game ports had NOTHING to do with the level and status of Linux as a whole / various components' of Linux maturity.
Past Linux ports just often lacked enough extensive QA and thus many bugs went unnoticed for long periods of time (often leading to bugs in GOLD MASTER versions [aka RTM] of products).
This really has nothing to do with how developed Linux was at the time.
Gogeous: Linux were not mature
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Linux as a system was pretty darn mature already 15 years ago!
It was totally usable as gaming platform even back then!
What YOU "think" about as "maturity" now is that during those years few things (other than Linux itself) "matured", namely:
- Vulkan showed up
- Linux porting companies started doing more "SANE" QA (thus quality of ports increased
- one certain talented individual started developing DXVK (which even at the early days was already better than WineDX11)
- Wine devs "managed" to pull themselves together and actually started progressing (thus "eventually" some important missing DLL and API functions got implemented which consequently lead to ability to ACTUALLY run some stuff "FINALLY")
- SDL improved
- there showed up Valve funded ACO vulkan-based shader compiler
honestly these have NOTHING to do with LINUX ALONE per se. These are projects TOTALLY independent from Linux ITSELF.
Linux itself didn't really change a whole lot in terms of it's usability as a gaming platform.
It was basically ready long ago, long before there were appropriate tools around.
Gogeous: unified for gaming until these days,
Insert "excuse me, what the F" meme here.
REALLY?
And how EXACTLY did anything change in the last 10 years in that regard?
We have more than few DOZEN Linux flavours that are actively developed AND USED.
How EXACTLY is it "unified" right now?
It did NOT get unified AT ALL!
Let me tell you what ACTUALLY happened:
- game developers started providing info on game dependencies so it's usually no longer necessary to shoot in the dark (believe me, in the past a TON of stuff "didn't work" for a LOT of people because they were missing dependencies without knowing about it)
- most game devs grew common sense and stopped using atrociously old libraries' versions (so no longer there exists problem of obtaining some old-a** outdated libraries' versions)
- things like SDL happened, it grew to be dependable, and game devs with common sense started using it instead of whole barrage of various software crap (so things shifted from "a ton of random software that may or may not work" to one unified, universal [thus easier to debug] library)
- some people made tools for EASY kernel and drivers upgrades on Ubuntu (so more inexperienced people could actually do it themselves)
- Ubuntu PPA repositories started existing (no longer necessary to compile drivers yourself if you want to replace those atrocious outdated " "stable" " packages getting in the way of modern up-to-date gaming, a win for inexperienced users that brought A LOT of them into Linux gaming)
- there showed up official-unofficial Mesa Valve PPA (Kisak) (so more wins for inexperienced users)
- some crazy nuts people (to those people: I mean seriously, if you dare to bring up "n--bs" [to this state of the art NOT-FOR-GREEN-PEOPLE distro] then IT'S YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, NOT community's FFS) started bringing "inexperienced people" to Arch Linux (which is close to bleeding edge [it actually isn't THE bleeding edge PER SE] so they can easily gain from current software on it, ergo better gaming experience, FAR better than Ubuntu for example)
- Manjaro project appeared (basically "ready to use", "easy mode install" Arch Linux with some preconfiguration) (MUCH easier deployment of modern up to date system [Arch Linux] for THE inexperienced users)
- Unity engine started providing direct Linux builds support (there is PLENTY of both AAA and indie games on Unity engine) (no longer necessary to outsource ports to some 3rd party dedicated companies, easier Linux game dev, better quality ports)
- some other game engines started to be more Linux friendly
- some other similar stuff happened (I don't feel like writing an essay about history of Linux game dev from last 10 years here)
- oh, and also M$ started being even bigger douchebags than before thus providing a LOT of incentive for some "Windows people" to move on to "something else"
These things have really NOTHING to do with Linux "unification". Nothing unified in Linux. Just tools got better and some people grew common sense (started coding using more universally "working" libraries) and some others managed to promote Linux among n--bs.
stub 2 (text to be edited in)