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I keep an active subscription for CrossOver to show my support to CodeWeavers, but I've never actually used it since I've always found compatibility to be much worse than the latest Wine development releases. It seems that CrossOver is only there for people that don't know much about computers and just want to try something just by clicking a few buttons.
Contrast this with most GNU/Linux users, who (in my experience at least) are far more likely to know a thing or two about computers, and are happy to build the software or troubleshoot an issue themselves (or look to community to help such as is largely the case with PlayOnLinux). I'm not surprised OS X users are more likely to purchase a subscription by comparison.
Like Vash63, I also agree with the decline in GNU/Linux sales are a result of having far more GNU/Linux games available natively (you've got GamingOnLinux and the like proclaiming people shouldn't buy modern games to play under Wine - they seem to care a lot about Steam stats), and the lack of DirectX 11. Just a few years ago, DirectX 9-only support was perfectly acceptable, and Wine does a darn good job there. I remember purchasing Dead Island Riptide (a 2013 title) on launch day with confidence Wine would satisfy the game requirements, and I was right. However these days almost any AAA title requires DirectX 11, and that's almost always a complete miss on Wine. There are so many known issues with DirectX 11, I don't even bother to report how games are working to the Wine AppDB and Bugzilla because there's really no point. Occasionally you'll get a game like Grim Dawn which supports DirectX 9, but that's really the exception rather than the rule these days.
I also question just how good the performance of DirectX 11 would be. I only find DirectX 9 performance satisfying these days with the Gallium on Nine patches, and Wine (and certainly CrossOver) have no official support for it. I think CodeWeavers are doing their GNU/Linux customers a significant disservice by not incorporating the Gallium on Nine patch set for use when the environment supports it. It feels the patches are held back because they are incompatible with OS X, so that's another reason I could see GNU/Linux users perhaps not feeling a strong urge to support CodeWeavers as of late.
Finally, there's Denuvo. Doom (2016) should have been a massive win for Wine this year since Id Software are probably the biggest AAA developer to use OpenGL instead of DirectX, yet have shown no interest in GNU/Linux. The early betas of the game showed much promise, but when the game was released it refused to run due to the Denuvo copy protection. It's not clear games with this copy protection will ever work, although I see on bug reports that people are actively investigating it. Games with Denuvo don't advertise they have it, so even a perfect DirectX 11 implementation would have Wine continue to be a hit or miss, which really sucks.
But I'm sure of one thing - the lack of DirectX 11 support must be the biggest thing that's hurting them right now. Fortunately it's something within their power to do something about, if they can just give it the focus it needs.
Contrast this with most GNU/Linux users, who (in my experience at least) are far more likely to know a thing or two about computers, and are happy to build the software or troubleshoot an issue themselves (or look to community to help such as is largely the case with PlayOnLinux). I'm not surprised OS X users are more likely to purchase a subscription by comparison.
Like Vash63, I also agree with the decline in GNU/Linux sales are a result of having far more GNU/Linux games available natively (you've got GamingOnLinux and the like proclaiming people shouldn't buy modern games to play under Wine - they seem to care a lot about Steam stats), and the lack of DirectX 11. Just a few years ago, DirectX 9-only support was perfectly acceptable, and Wine does a darn good job there. I remember purchasing Dead Island Riptide (a 2013 title) on launch day with confidence Wine would satisfy the game requirements, and I was right. However these days almost any AAA title requires DirectX 11, and that's almost always a complete miss on Wine. There are so many known issues with DirectX 11, I don't even bother to report how games are working to the Wine AppDB and Bugzilla because there's really no point. Occasionally you'll get a game like Grim Dawn which supports DirectX 9, but that's really the exception rather than the rule these days.
I also question just how good the performance of DirectX 11 would be. I only find DirectX 9 performance satisfying these days with the Gallium on Nine patches, and Wine (and certainly CrossOver) have no official support for it. I think CodeWeavers are doing their GNU/Linux customers a significant disservice by not incorporating the Gallium on Nine patch set for use when the environment supports it. It feels the patches are held back because they are incompatible with OS X, so that's another reason I could see GNU/Linux users perhaps not feeling a strong urge to support CodeWeavers as of late.
Finally, there's Denuvo. Doom (2016) should have been a massive win for Wine this year since Id Software are probably the biggest AAA developer to use OpenGL instead of DirectX, yet have shown no interest in GNU/Linux. The early betas of the game showed much promise, but when the game was released it refused to run due to the Denuvo copy protection. It's not clear games with this copy protection will ever work, although I see on bug reports that people are actively investigating it. Games with Denuvo don't advertise they have it, so even a perfect DirectX 11 implementation would have Wine continue to be a hit or miss, which really sucks.
But I'm sure of one thing - the lack of DirectX 11 support must be the biggest thing that's hurting them right now. Fortunately it's something within their power to do something about, if they can just give it the focus it needs.
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