Steam Linux Usage Reportedly Hits 0.33% For March

[untore]

obligatory “if you want to get the steam survey just re install steam in a chroot with a different ip”
Not that it matters since a dent in the stats is only gonna come from steam machines

[azdaha]

Ihonestly i dont see the average Linux user being a heavy gamer. It is pretty much the same thing on MacOS. People gravitate to these OS's because they need the power for professional reasons. If they really wanted to game Windows is the low effort path.

I would agree with you to some extent. However, given that Windows keeps getting more intrusive in every way, I stay away from Windows 10 as far as possible. Additionally, while I may not be playing a game every single day (though, lately I have ), I do love having the ability to do so without jumping through major hoops and over hurdles just to play a game when I want.

[caligula]

As I've been noting for a very long time: Companies really don't want to revisit their codebase once they're done with it. The idea that they'll have to revisit the code in a year or so when someone else breaks compatibility with the system libraries the code is using is NOT very attractive to them. Nevermind the development time involved and cost of technical support for the platform.

It basically comes down to the fact there aren't enough users to justify the cost. Nevermind the most damming thing for gaming on Linux: "Just run it in WINE.".

The backwards compatibility might break on other platforms too. Windows might have a pretty decent track record of maintaining compatibility but on game consoles it adds to the total cost when some emulation chips / modes etc. are needed. Most games are not designed to last. The codebase is uber shit, to begin with. Linux would be a perfect platform for maintaining the products if they released the sources in say 5 to 10 years. Strong copyrights are a problem here. The game companies rarely care about abandonware.

[thechef]

Yeah Steam Machines are a failure, Linux doesn't have many gamers in proportion (what about absolute numbers, because population grows therefore attractivity isn't proportionate to percentage).

However, tech is looking extremely good and I can enjoy an increasing number of good games. Lots of inertia elsewhere.
Dare to be non-profitable or unpopular for a long to very long time. That's how gravity works.

[Brisse]

I just got the survey popup when I started Steam right now. Last time I think was about six months ago.

Also, I looked a little bit on the statistics from last month and noticed there are more Linux users on Steam than there are Swedes on Steam, and I'm pretty sure there are millions of people using Steam here in Sweden.

[Brisse]

Okay, so according to https://steamspy.com/country/SE there are 3,469,230 ± 178,657 active users from Sweden. According to the Steam HW survey 0.22% of users have their localization set to Swedish. If 0.33% are running on Linux, then the absolute number of active Steam users running on Linux would be roughly (0.33/0.22)*3469230 = 5,203,845.

[str8at]

I got the steam survey on win 10 yesterday and refused then booted up Linux and did the survey. There are not enough big titles. Last week I was going to dump Linux altogether and bought some windows only titles. Epic released fortnite for mobile and then pubg was released for mobile... Then microsoft emails me with a new terms of service that is complete bs.
Xbox users are getting banned from their devices for bad language. Microsoft will be focusing on cloud and probably cloud gaming too. Valve needs to do something and fast I am running out of patience.

It's all up to you and where you use your money.

All proprietary companies dream of user lockins - deals and specially exclusive deals are how we users are fooled to a platform, but some companies are better than others. If you don't understand that your wallet is actually a vote of direction, or simply ignore it to burn some hours, you are blindly voting for your worst enemy.

I only buy games that are made to run on Linux (no wine). I don't want to support Microsoft's dream. I want to support my dream. I want Windows, Mac and Linux to be equally supported, I want vendors to be where users are and not the users to choose a system where vendors are. If that means that I can't play Microsoft exclusives, I don't care, to me it means that the company don't want my money so I instead spend it on someone who do support my platform. This is all just about entertainment and with more than 4000 games with Linux support, I don't feel any less entertained after I dumped Windows altogether.

I'm not trying to tell you what YOU should do, do what's right to you, but I want you to understand that your decisions matters and it has consequences in this "game".

[str8at]

I got the steam survey on win 10 yesterday and refused then booted up Linux and did the survey. There are not enough big titles. Last week I was going to dump Linux altogether and bought some windows only titles. Epic released fortnite for mobile and then pubg was released for mobile... Then microsoft emails me with a new terms of service that is complete bs.
Xbox users are getting banned from their devices for bad language. Microsoft will be focusing on cloud and probably cloud gaming too. Valve needs to do something and fast I am running out of patience.

It's all up to you and where you spend your money.

All proprietary companies dream of user lockins - deals and specially exclusive deals are how we users are fooled to a platform, but some companies are better than others. If you don't understand that your wallet is actually a vote of direction, or simply ignore it to burn some hours, you are blindly voting for your worst enemy.

I only buy games that are made to run on Linux (no wine). I don't want to support Microsoft's dream. I want to support my dream. I want Windows, Mac and Linux to be equally supported, I want vendors to be where users are and not the users to choose a system where vendors are. If that means that I can't play Microsoft exclusives, I don't care, to me it means that the company don't want my money so I instead spend it on someone who do support my platform. This is all just about entertainment and with more than 4000 games with Linux support, I don't feel any less entertained after I dumped Windows altogether.

I'm not trying to tell you what YOU should do, do what's right to you, but I want you to understand that your decisions matters and it has consequences in this "game".

[arbition]

I imagine some games get a whole load more activity under linux than the average game. Games like Factorio. Add your own speculation as to why, imo, the process and detail thinking required probably crosses over a lot with linux usage. On that note, I wonder what the breakdown of platforms are for each genre?

[gamerk2]

The backwards compatibility might break on other platforms too. Windows might have a pretty decent track record of maintaining compatibility but on game consoles it adds to the total cost when some emulation chips / modes etc. are needed. Most games are not designed to last. The codebase is uber shit, to begin with. Linux would be a perfect platform for maintaining the products if they released the sources in say 5 to 10 years. Strong copyrights are a problem here. The game companies rarely care about abandonware.

Most of the major home consoles going back to the Atari 2600 have been backward compatible. The main exceptions are the N64 (which hardware was was "unique"), the first two XBOXs (due to going from x86 to PPC back to x86 again), and the PS3 (another "unique" piece of hardware). [Note the SNES was fully backward compatible with NES games, but no converter was ever made by Nintendo.]

And ignoring consoles for a minute: Developers create an application, they support it as necessary to add content and remove bugs. At that point, there shouldn't be any need to continue supporting it; it already works. This is one area where Linux design philosophy is simply WRONG; changes to the underlying kernel or its libraries should not result in developers needing to recompile/redesign working codebases.