A Half-Year Since Valve Released Steam Play For Linux, Its Marketshare Is Still Sub-1%

[llukas]

Play those ugly closed source games on Linux? What next? Installing nvidia blob-of-doom? Never!

[M@yeulC]

Well, on the bright side, this is around the reported marketshare for HTC vive + Occulus rift

I also agree with debianxfce for once: there is more than enough games to choose from so that you can play those that run well without missing out too much on others. Heck, I even bought Risk of Rain 2 on Friday with the firm intent on asking for a refund if it didn't work in steamplay (there were no reports on protondb yet). 20 hours in, it has been a (almost, this is still early access) flawless experience. THat's gaming as it should be: no stress over which platform you run your games on. Just buy, sit back and relax.

And as much as project stadia would enable that kind of experience, I am not willing to relinquish my ownership of those games. What if I want to play those games in 40 years (if I'm still around by then)?

[liamdawe]

For those interested, I'm tracking it on GOL on a dedicated page: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/index....am_linux_share

[Mike Frett]

Linux isn't the problem now, humans are. People would rather spend hours trying to get Windows to function correctly instead of taking 10 minutes to try Linux. Pathetic, I'm sorry.

[Syfer]

Point 1: Exists there an explicit statement by Valve that Proton gaming counts as Linux market share and doesn't count as Windows market share?

Point 2: There is a significant latency (months) for AAA Windows titles to get supported by Proton/Wine, which misses the initial hype surrounding a new AAA game. Even after that time passes, for example, The Witcher 3 released in year 2015 for Windows had performance issues and graphical issues in Linux in year 2018. (I mean this as a motivation for Linux-gaming-ecosystem developers: there are a lot of opportunities to make Linux better).

Point 1:
Update 1 at https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articl...-of-wine.12400 states Steam Play counts as Linux, but it's a news report on a closed door conversation(I've not seen any public statements on it from Valve)

Point 2:
Just going to throw this out there: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articl...ory/Steam+Play
From recently popular games:
Deep Rock Galactic works just fine and seems to be a recent, popular game.
Sekiro, Shadows Die twice gets a lot of platinum reports.
Devil May Cry 5 has a gold rating with many platinum reports

[skeevy420]

It's funny. I've found that I really don't care for Proton all that much...only because it's a pain in the ass due to all the games being thrown into the same common directory making it difficult to test between games with a Linux native version and a Proton version. I consider it easier to just maintain a native Linux Steam client with no Proton games and to use a separate Wine Steam install for everything else and then launching that Steam with either Lutris provided Wine runtimes or custom built Wine with Proton patches included on a per-game basis.

If Steam would install Proton games to a different directory or allow both Linux and Proton versions of a game to exist on the same system at the same time I'd like it a hell of a lot more. Proton as a project is great. How Steam implemented Proton into the client just sucks.

[Jabberwocky]

Exactly. My kid wanted a real gun so I build a gaming PC for shooting games... You can live without a game that do not work or is too expensive. Do not be addicted, that will ruin your life.

You have just described 90% of steam users, depending on your "lens" or definition of ruin it could include me.

[ThoreauHD]

Meanwhile, Google is getting 100% of their customers to game on Linux with Stadia.

[Bsdisbetter]

Linux isn't the problem now, humans are. People would rather spend hours trying to get Windows to function correctly instead of taking 10 minutes to try Linux. Pathetic, I'm sorry.

LOL you have that flipped about. People buy windows, mac os because they are trivial to set up. Deny all you want but it's why they're billion/trillion dollar companies. Most devices plug & play, most games work flawlessly (sans developer bugs) and that's why they lead the market and why developers in the big game factories don't even bother with .... what's it's name? Linux? Hell, a lot don't even bother with apple, so what hope has linux.

In fact even the pc market for games is dwindling as more and more games are peddled for xbox & playstation.
Does EA or Ubisoft even produce titles for linux?
Blind adherence to a platform is just a big LOL. Use an OS for it's strengths, just don't excuse it's weaknesses by attempting to trash others. It makes you look stupid.

When big money games like battlefield, farcry, elder scrolls to name a few can run natively on linux, get back to me.

[starshipeleven]

Hi, you must work for Google cause nobody in their right mind would say that Cloud Gaming works. It's psychically impossible, literally as you'd have to break the speed of light to make it work. Unless you're one of those people that think that playing a game in past tense is A OK? Which I have to question your "gaming" credentials as everyone knows that Assassin's Creed Odyssey is better on PC since you can crack the game to unlock all those micro-transactions as the game was meant to be played. Can you do this on Stadia? I think not.

Cloud Gaming can reach console levels if the internet connection does not suck balls. You know, consoles, where people still buy shit titles like AssCreed and can't even unlock the microtransactions.