Steam VR Marketshare Already Larger Than Steam Linux Marketshare

[profoundWHALE]

Please stop quoting these numbers. We don't know the methodology of Steam survey, and we don't know what those numbers mean. So simply ignore them - they are useless for any serious discussion.

The methodology is likely a random, once-a-month survey that will ask people to do a survey. If you ignore it, the steam servers will likely just ask another random person until they have X amount of results. The catch is that it only take a look at separate logins. So the same account logged logged into 3 other separate computers all get a chance to be selected for the survey.

What I don't like about it is I can install steam on a new linux build and not get the survey. The same day, with the same account, I can have a new windows build and I get the steam survey. Granted, it also happened the other way around, but it can have an effect on the final numbers if we don't know what those final numbers even are.

What I do like about it is that it doesn't automatically do that to everyone (privacy) and it prevents the issues around people who use a particular OS (Linux, Mac) or with particular hardware (AMD fanboy, Nvidia fanboy) will report more than the baseline, which skews the results towards the minorities.

[sarmad]

Some of the Valve Linux games have easy bugs to fix and they refuse to fix them. Valve is just too damn lazy. I don't want to hear about how they're rubbing nickels over there and can't afford to fix anything.

Linux could have been a nice gaming platform but the industry abides by certain politics. But that whole Steam Machines / SteamOS effort was a joke.

Are you suggesting that Valve should've just released the Steam client for Linux without bothering with SteamOS and Steam Machines?

[Brophen]

If other Linux users are like me, the numbers are skewed a bit because even though I try to only buy Linux games, I still game on my Windows computer. I'm more moving towards a future of not using Windows but not there yet. Too many games are Windows only etc etc

[pal666]

Too many games are Windows only

there are more linux games than you have time to play

[Brophen]

there are more linux games than you have time to play

I already have too many games for Linux than I have time to play and yet I keep buying more.

[shmerl]

The methodology is likely a random, once-a-month survey that will ask people to do a survey.

Just as you point out, I've heard similar reports that this survey is skewed and happens on Windows more often than on Linux, and it doens't happen at all on Valve's own SteamOS. All that just indicates for me that Valve themselves don't take it seriously, and this survey should not be used for any market or sales potential evaluation.

If anything, useful numbers would be either percentages of sales per OS for cross platform titles, or total numbers of active users per OS. Steam publish neither of those, while they probably have them. And sales data that comes from developers who are willing to share, differs quite a lot from this survey. So, to summarize - this survey is simply useless in my opinion. Someone like Humble Bundle in contrast publish stats that are sensible.

[Kemosabe]

Of course it is a mess! If at all the games are being ported with a delay of many months if not years, the performance is worse compared to windows and linux there are linux specific bugs. For example it took years for the devs to fix the command menu in Insugency... Let's assume the thing is actually released and you are ready with your linux box - be prepared that they have excluded your AMD GPU. I mean, you weren't even able to bring SteamVR to Linux at the same time. I recently read the LinuxVR quality is significantly worse - still!!

With the delays being the biggest issue the number of high quality games is still tiny. Dear Devs and Pierre-Loup, start taking Linux gaming seriously before complaining that too few people are buying it.

[kenjitamura]

there are more linux games than you have time to play

Problem being for some people like me is that I like MMORPG's such as TESO and there are no good AAA MMORPG's on linux. Having lots of games doesn't mean having lots of good games and there are still several entire gaming genre's where linux has literally zero good offerings.

[M@GOid]

I am one of those with more games than time to play. I have 219 games, of those 139 are Linux games. The majority of these games where purchased in Linux to play on Linux exclusively. What this guy mean by I have to buy more games? I have enough, and let me tell you, the Valve ones are not the best ports.

With that said, I'm as glad as the next guy to have Valve on Linux, but people here do not like when others step on our toes man.

[Guest]

I was contributing to that Linux market share, until AMD messed up power management for my R9 390 a few months ago. Been waiting for a fix ever since. And yes, I did try their latest Powerplay changes for 4.15, no dice.