This is an interesting take, especially coming from a non-haning focused tech website like Ars Technica. I feel like it’s been too long since people were truly hyped about half life 3 though, and this wouldn’t be enough.
People are increasingly unhappy with windows though, and the EoL of windows 10 may push people to Linux anyways.
Making HL3 only GNU/Linux exclusive would be the gigachadest thing ever done. Well even better than exclusivity. Make the game playable on windows but only with a downgrade in performance or need of emulation, like the whole industry has made with GNU/Linux.
Imagine if the Windows version requires WSL to work.