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“The number of Linux gamers is a tiny fraction of the overall market, so I won’t receive a high enough number of sales to warrant bothering to release a native Linux port.”

Ultimately the decision is for you, the developer, to make, to decide if it is or isn’t worth the investment to officially support Linux with a native application. No one will deny that the overall number of Linux gamers compared to Windows gamers is significantly lower.

According to Valve’s Steam Hardware Survey, at the time of writing, there are an estimated 2,400,000 monthly active users who use Linux as their primary desktop OS on Steam. This number is calculated by taking the 1.82% userbase statistic from the August 2023 survey, and applying that % to the estimated 132 million ‘monthly active users’ that Valve reports to have.

Linux gamers exert incredibly strong brand loyalty to their platform, are very pro-sumer in their purchases, and often want to actively support developers who support their platform. (Which you should take advantage of to increase sales and gain exposure for your game, see Leverage Linux Loyalty)

By its nature, the Linux gaming market also has much less competition and saturation than the Windows gaming market, even on Steam, due to the overall lower number of available games.

You may find your title will be especially popular if your game is of a genre that isn’t commonly available on Linux. AAA games and multiplayer PvP games are often not available on Linux, either natively or via Proton (due to their frequent use of AntiCheat technology that isn’t compatible with Proton). If either of those descriptions fit your game, you should consider that your title would not be facing much competition on Linux.

Combined with the other benefits of supporting Linux, a properly managed Linux native port of your game can be very profitable.