Really interesting write-up. I've had to consider some of the issues in the past for non-game applications, and what I usually resorted to was the second option

Really interesting write-up. I've had to consider some of the issues in the past for non-game applications, and what I usually resorted to was the second option, and semi-automated updates. I don't think the first option is that much of a hurdle for Linux users. I guess there might be package conflicts that aren't trivial to resolve sometimes, but I'm not sure how often those pop up in the game dev scene, though. I wonder if it would be viable for games to come with an AppImage (or one of the other two), and something like `game_assets.dat` for the game files (so the AppImage doesn't grow too large). Also, slightly unrelated, but I think it would be make sense for ich.io to have a steam-like client for automating the game's life cycle on player machines. It would make it convenient for both devs and players. Maybe it could it could come with a set of tools for developers too to help automate some of the packaging/publishing woes.