You want game developers to learn a bunch of new tools in an unfamiliar operating system to solve an artificial problem that said operating system itself created just so they can target the minuscule sliver of the PC gaming market that runs Linux but don't dual-boot for games? Get real. Nobody is going to do that for such a tiny number of customers.
However you give them a tool to take the same Windows build they ship to the rest of their customers and they get to ship for Linux too? Why would they say no?
We're going to need a whole extra order of magnitude on the Linux desktop market share before we'll ever see serious investment from the games industry at large for native Linux builds.
And what does it matter if you're running a Windows PE calling Win32? The system is still Linux. How different is it to rely on Proton then it is to rely on flatpak or another containerization technology to ship your app. You still have to bolt on a giant pile of complexity just to ship a zip file of game.exe and its libraries.
This the classic hypocrisy of the chicken and egg issue of the "PC market".
You need already a significant "PC market share" to get video games, but you will never get that "PC market share" because you don't have video games.
But in the first place, you will really not get that "PC market share" because people uses what is installed by default on the PC they buy. So you will need mass default installation of elf/linux on PC first of all. Everything else is pointless for "PC market share", only hardcore (omega hardcore) regulation can do anything here.
Regulation for video games: forced support of a set of as simple as possible exe file format and OS interfaces, very stable in time, namely not msft ones which are disgusting and grotesquely complex and massive (but msft would be forced to support them). And if regulation happens, it will happen most likely for other more important things than video games (for instance, critical online services of administrations or utilities).
In the end, we are reasonably left only with the good will of game devs.
And I think proton is not helping here, to say the least.
In principle, mass default installation of elf/linux on PC happens now, because Win11 comes with WSL. I don't know if a Linux game could be distributed with a Windows installer that makes use of WSL: I suppose Linux game devs aren't motivated to explore that.
At what point does my weekend project become a "critical online service"? At what point does my Pong clone become a game that needs regulating on how it's built?
Is it illegal for me to create a piece of art (i.e. a game) whose sole purpose is to demonstrate the fragility/absurdity of modern software abstractions by building it in some insane nesting of APIs?
I don't ask these to rhetorically imply that we don't need more regulation. I completely agree that there are online services that need way more regulation as they have become infrastructural.
These are all questions that we have to collectively (and not just programmers) discuss and decide where the lines are. It's not as simple as "force a set of simple as possible exe file format and OS interfaces."
However you give them a tool to take the same Windows build they ship to the rest of their customers and they get to ship for Linux too? Why would they say no?
We're going to need a whole extra order of magnitude on the Linux desktop market share before we'll ever see serious investment from the games industry at large for native Linux builds.
And what does it matter if you're running a Windows PE calling Win32? The system is still Linux. How different is it to rely on Proton then it is to rely on flatpak or another containerization technology to ship your app. You still have to bolt on a giant pile of complexity just to ship a zip file of game.exe and its libraries.