> On the other hand most linux gamers know how to run games under wine, so I really don't see any advantage for a developer to make a native linux version. May

> On the other hand most linux gamers know how to run games under wine, so I really don't see any advantage for a developer to make a native linux version. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I've never bought a game because it could theoretically run under Wine, while I've bought quite a few games that run on Linux. Very rarely do I buy a game that does not natively run on Linux. Wine seems like kind of an ugly hack even in the best case scenario. You don't know what performance is going to be like with your hardware, and you usually don't have anyone who's tested the program on your hardware to make sure it runs correctly and doesn't crash, and obviously games are extremely sensitive to these kinds of hardware dependent things. Installing Wine can be gross too, you have to install a bunch of 32 bit libraries on an otherwise clean 64 bit system. I'd say the appeal of making a native Linux game is that it gets you access to the market of people who will buy a native Linux game. It's true that you already had the market of people who are technically running Linux and playing Windows games via Wine, but presumably there are many people who aren't going to go to that much trouble. (Obviously, there are many cases where supporting Linux isn't financially viable anyway, Wine or native.)