GOG Galaxy has been experimental until recently and it is more concerned with being a unified gaming client rather than the primary way to distribute GOG games. In the last couple of years it has actually become quite unstable anyway and it is barely being maintained, clearly not a focus, Linux or not.
“Forcing its users to be at the whim of Microsoft” is quite a stretch.
But if the idea is that other platforms might screw you over some time down the line and this platform will have your back, I am not convinced if they entirely dismiss Linux. I know it is not practical for CDPR to develop Proton like Valve. The bare minimum they can do though is to show they have contingency plans in case Valve stops upstreaming its translation layer. Otherwise, why not stick to the platform that is too big to fail and is actually doing something useful?
Also consider the fact that a large fraction of GOG games are painstakingly restored old games, where revenue is clearly an afterthought, they sometimes seem like a nonprofit. You can’t reasonably expect them to also add Linux support to games from an era where Linux gaming was practically nonexistent, modern Linux translation layers will most likely be completely incompatible.
And again, they have not had a client for most of their tenure, and I cannot think of anything more consumer-friendly or consistent with Linux ideology than literally letting you download the files and do what you want with them without any DRM.
I don't have any inside knowledge but there is clearly an internal battle at CD Projekt (and their investors since they are a public company) between those who want to print money doing the unethical stuff that other game developers and stores do and those who want a more customer friendly approach. They tried a more ethical online focused thing with GWENT (that ended up partly under GOG due to relying on Galaxy and was a big reason they pushed for higher Galaxy use for a while) but it ended up not really making much money. Things like this California law are great to help support the availability of DRM-free games.
Also, GOG has around 6500 games now and I'd be supprised if they were involved in getting more than about 100 of them to work on modern systems. Galaxy has been around over half the time GOG has been in business (as an online store, not counting the early CD Projekt days). You are thinking of the early days of GOG but they are quite a bit larger now and CD Projekt as a whole is much larger now. I still think they are the best option to support DRM-free games but they are not the same as when they started (not only in bad ways, the refund policy is great now).
And you can just download the games from their website, they don't force you to use gog galaxy.
Proton itself is open-source[1].
If someone wanted to package up standalone Proton binaries for a Linux distro, then I don't see any particular barriers that would prevent that.
On GoG's part, they do provide the ability to just download a game with a web browser (the old-fashioned, DRM-free way). From there, I can manage the games I that own in any way that I choose.
Thus, I'm simply not seeing a problem here that needs solved. I already have the freedom to do whatever I want.
Which part of this situation is broken, do you suppose, and why does GoG in particular need to fix it?
[0]: https://boilingsteam.com/valve-breaks-the-shackles-of-proton...
What does a person buy when they buy a game from GoG?
In my own experience with buying from GoG: What I buy is a copy of a Windows installer, and [often] a Steam code.
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If I then want to do something on my Linux box (or my Amiga 500) with that Windows installer, then: That's on me.
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I don't think that they owe me anything else here. YMMV.
The only way to ensure I have a working backup of a GOG installer is to download the Windows release even when Linux is an option.
also game developer that made Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077.