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."
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.