Steam's Linux Gaming Marketshare For April Comes In At Just Above 0.5%

[ElectricPrism]

I'm gonna take a leap of faith and say that if wine bridges the gap for DX9-12 then gamers will come over and add their voice to the demand for native games.

[OneTimeShot]

Valve should change their pricing structure for companies that support cross-platform. Maybe 5% more for "Windows only" games. This would help justify supporting all versions.

In any case, with nearly 10% Linux/MacOS, cross-platform already makes a lot of sense.

[theriddick]

DXVK type solutions are making great progress, but you still need to hold your tongue at the right angle to get some things working, often needing patches that are workarounds which wine team ignore.

[Tuxee]

Sigh.
Always the same bullshit comments under the Steam market share articles.

Always some people assuming that if game x or game y would be on Linux the market share would go up "considerably".
Always some people demanding some "initiative" (from whom?) to boost Linux game development.
Always some people coming up with "smart plans" what Valve should do, to make Linux as gaming platform great again.
And of course
always some postings questioning the survey pop-up frequency.

As long as Windows comes pre-installed on pretty much every computer the market share growth of Linux will be a very slow crawl. And all these "theories", "suggestions" and "ideas" are - well - bullshit.

[mir3x]

"Valve removed steam machine from its Home Page". Sry, steam machines are dead, linux gaming will go to 2010 state soon maybe. I wont be suprised if Valve will ditch steam for linux in 5 years.

In Civ5 with Gods and Kings expansion if you use missionaries to spread religions you get like high chance to crash the game, if u reload then you can use it without crash that one time ... Guess what - its was never fixed - its more - that bug was carried to civ6 ... restarting civ5 or 6 takes probably more time than booting to windows.
Average gamer wont blame Firaxis for that, he will blame Linux.

[OneBitUser]

"Valve removed steam machine from its Home Page". Sry, steam machines are dead, linux gaming will go to 2010 state soon maybe. I wont be suprised if Valve will ditch steam for linux in 5 years.

In Civ5 with Gods and Kings expansion if you use missionaries to spread religions you get like high chance to crash the game, if u reload then you can use it without crash that one time ... Guess what - its was never fixed - its more - that bug was carried to civ6 ... restarting civ5 or 6 takes probably more time than booting to windows.
Average gamer wont blame Firaxis for that, he will blame Linux.

The fun thing is... I never encountered those bugs in either of those games.
And I have played them for a few hundred hours, exclusively on Linux.
My experience was that mods would frequently crash my PC, or simply introduce bugs that made Civ6 unplayable. Never had the latter issue with Civ5, though.

I mostly feel that mod support is a hit-or-miss thing on Linux: mod devs are using Windows (almost?) exclusively, so sometimes they introduce bugs that are a non-issue for MS's POS OS, like case sensitivity in the mods' folder structure and files. This was an issue in a Crusader Kings II mod I play, and it was caused by simple tardiness.

[pirx]

We need more people to use Linux on their personal computers, period. For work, entertainment etc. We need more push on that.

Why? I don't want linux polluted with dumb gamers.

it should be automated.

It is.

[carewolf]

At least I got surveyed twice this month.. Not sure how that happened, but once for each of my installation I launched steam on this month.

[carewolf]

Note huge changes in Windows versions and language of steam. I think they updated their algorithm so it doesn't overcount new installations.

[cybertraveler]

GNU/Linux is arguably already the best OS for advanced, technical users and for those who care about freedom, privacy and security.

If you want GNU/Linux to also be the best OS for novice users and the typical gamer, then you have to focus on supporting stuff that you don't necessarily care about. You have to support efforts that makes GNU/Linux attractive to these users. Efforts like: Ubuntu, Open Source graphics driver creation, Firefox, Chrome, Gnome desktop and any other project which seeks to produce a competitive, fast, simple & easy to use desktop environment.

Even if you don't like Ubuntu, Gnome or similar you have to recognise that novice users want or need this stuff. The only way they're switching is if you make a GNU/Linux platform for them that is better than their Windows experience.

Right now, Windows runs their games faster. Windows supports more of their games. Windows gives them a better driver experience (they buy a computer with all the drivers already installed). Windows is simple to use (no "scary" terminal that they are required to use). Windows has lots of easy to use GUI software. Windows has easy to use installers to install software without worrying about dependencies.

For novice users, right now, GNU/Linux does have a small number of advantages that we can use to "sell" it to novices. These include:

• far better privacy
• better security (largely because it's targeted less because it has a smaller market share)
• centralised software update mechanisms. IE you run one software updater to update all the software on your system. Who here has experienced using a Windows system with lots of software installed where each program and even Windows itself has its own updater? You have an army of little software updaters. All of them have different interfaces. Many run on boot slowing the system down. They bug you at different times of day to update. Probably many of them are insecure by design (eg using http for downloads and no use of signing).
• it doesn't, seemingly-randomly, reboot on its own to install updates (WTF Microsoft?)

The above clearly isn't enough though. It needs to be easier, faster, more beautiful and more ergonomic than Windows. That's how we get them to switch... if you even want that.