GOG Game Service May Come To Linux

[shmerl]

They doesn't need to, because main Windows version works fine without this fixes.

It doesn't (for Linux users). They should take fixes seriously. I think they never considered them important enough.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

It doesn't (for Linux users). They should take fixes seriously.

They take is seriously - they provide fix for supported platform, that need this fix. Linux is not supported platform, so there is no one reason to provide fix for Linux users, until Linux become supported platform for Witcher 1.

[shmerl]

How is Mac a supported platform then? It doesn't take any more effort to support any platform that runs Wine. The Wine is the platform essentially. It's simple - submit patches to Wine upstream, and keep codebase the same for all releases.

[TechMage89]

The wine project is pretty picky about the patches they accept (they don't want the code to become a horrible, unmaintainable mess of hacks, understandably), so they might need to maintain their own patchset/branch against Wine.

Actually, winelib is a pretty decent solution, since it enables them to include whatever hacks each particular game needs without too much difficulty.

[FutureSuture]

This request has now surpassed 4 000 votes. Many thanks to all those who voted!

[Enverex]

Why didn't they ship their fixes for Wine upstream then?

Most are generally hacks rather than fixes (see Cedega for examples of this). Hacks would never be accepted upstream because they generally would now, or in the future, interfere with something else.

[grantek]

GOG is a distributor with ties into publishing, but they're not developers, so talking about winelib isn't really their territory. The best thing they can do for Linux is supporting it with their in-house tools (their downloader and installer), supporting old games with emulators on Linux (the great many dosbox games, maybe console emulators if they can get the rights, maybe even ReactOS in a VM if that becomes necessary to run Windows 95 games on Windows 8), and pushing developers/publishers to support Linux for games that are currently "alive" or in development.

[shmerl]

Not exactly. GOG is owned by CDPR, which is a development company. GOG does have some developers team as well it seems. But I think the subject of Winelib was in context of CDPR development, rather than GOG. What would be good to see from GOG is primarily distribution of native Linux games.

CDPR are also working on the OpenGL port of their engine for the Witcher 2 (targeting Mac OSX), so it's good to show them some interest in releasing a Linux version as well.

[Enverex]

GOG is a distributor with ties into publishing, but they're not developers, so talking about winelib isn't really their territory. The best thing they can do for Linux is supporting it with their in-house tools (their downloader and installer), supporting old games with emulators on Linux (the great many dosbox games, maybe console emulators if they can get the rights, maybe even ReactOS in a VM if that becomes necessary to run Windows 95 games on Windows 8), and pushing developers/publishers to support Linux for games that are currently "alive" or in development.

If that's the case, how do they fix the games to run on Windows 7 (if they didn't originally) and remove the CD protection?

[FutureSuture]

CDPR are also working on the OpenGL port of their engine for the Witcher 2 (targeting Mac OSX), so it's good to show them some interest in releasing a Linux version as well.

Well, Add Mac OS X versions of games currently has 855 votes as opposed to the 4 313 votes that Add Linux versions of games has so I suppose that is already being done! GOG's quality standards are too high apparently and thus they don't wish to support Linux as it would be a nightmare to keep everything to their standards.