Philip Rebohle, DXVK's founding developer, stated in an interview that he started the project "to get one specific game to work". Later, he explained in a forum post that he was a bit of a Nier fanboy, and that it was a relatively simple game to use as a test subject for DXVK.
Rebohle was later contacted and hired by Valve. Wine already had a D3D11 compatibility layer, but it wasn't nearly as far ahead as DXVK at the time. It's fair to say that Linux gaming wouldn't exist in its current form if not for one guy's appreciation for Nier Automata. Rebohle still works at Valve, currently conributing to VKD3D-Proton.
Depending on your profession a small team just proved that you can even fly as high as it gonna gets.
More often than not the main problem is how our education system is set up, teaching certain topics like CAD or image manipulation with specific software from companies which "invest in education" (i.e. pay Universities and educators to create future customers for them). Adobe and Autodesk are the biggest dicks in this regard, but also Apple.
Back to games, the general rule by now is "if it is on Steam and doesn't have the worst anti-cheat, it usually works". Outside of Steam you may have to tinker a little bit, but Heroic and Lutris make this easier by the week. The biggest problems more often than not are the god damn third-party launchers.
I'm a sysadmin at a university. Fortunately we never used Adobe, and recently ditched Autodesk and Unity for Blender and Godot. Still on Windows, but I'll take what I can get.