Steam's December Numbers Point To A Lower Linux Marketshare But With More Oddities

[Almindor]

I been using steam in linux since before we had a native client.
Recently i got asked to participate in survey for the first time ever in linux so it's not like they probe linux users very often.

Please stop the "I didn't get the survey" drivel. It's tireing. I got it a couple times so what? The averages are fine, linux really is < 1%, just accept it.

I don't think non-console Linux has any chance of breaking the 1% barrier. In a way it's not a bad thing tho, it just means we're the 1%...

[alcalde]

We're all using Epic Game Store now. Epic keeps giving away free games and Linux users like free. :-)

[calc]

Imagine being only 0.XX % of the market but still being essential to computing and planetary plus space operations.

”of the gaming market”

FTFY

I know lots of people, including myself, who use Linux daily who have never installed Steam. I’ve used Linux for over 25 years.

[HenryM]

China. that's all it is.

the "Simplified Chinese" language just gained 14.43% of the overall base, an increase of over 60% (!) for the language which now makes up 37.87% of all steam activity

the majority of Chinese PCs are running Windows 7 on Intel quad core CPUs and Nvidia GPUs

Nvidia also jumped from 74.5 to 80.5 percent, Intel to 83.8 from 79.5

[Zoll]

Actually those number do indeed now reflect a better average for the world. I even suspect we're closer to the 0.5% mark. Barely anyone wants to use Linux on the desktop, that's the reality. Hopefully it improves in the future, but it needs to be a big push from a big company like Google/Lenovo/..etc.

[duby229]

Actually those number do indeed now reflect a better average for the world. I even suspect we're closer to the 0.5% mark. Barely anyone wants to use Linux on the desktop, that's the reality. Hopefully it improves in the future, but it needs to be a big push from a big company like Google/Lenovo/..etc.

Actually, I think the real truth is, if you count workstations, i.e non-gamers, linux desktop marketshare has got to be closer to 2%. And that's definitely a drop from the Gnome2 days. Too many people hate Gnome shell and think that's what Linux is.

[Guest]

I been using steam in linux since before we had a native client.
Recently i got asked to participate in survey for the first time ever in linux so it's not like they probe linux users very often.

Yeah, the survey just pops up randomly for some users. It's not an accurate method of gathering info and market share. I'm personally ok with anonymous stats collection for everyone, as long as it's anonymous and doesn't start collecting other info like battery percentage, temperature, websites I visit etc.

[entropy]

Valve has practically given up on Linux.
Yes, they still have the client, paying some driver devs and DXVK - but that's pocket money.
After all Proton may be also interpreted as a plan b, to still feed the Linux platform with AAA games,
while most of the bigger devs won't provide Linux builds anymore (and probably never had).

There was a time when it at least looked like Valve tried to leverage their market position
to convince devs and publishers to get out their games for Linux natively.
My perception is that's not the case anymore.
Yet, the platform is in the wild. They can't simply shut it down.

If Valve is still behind a Linux strategy they believe in, they would try to further push
big devs to release native builds.

And, more striking to me, not announcing HL:Alyx for Linux says everything.
Also, why is the Valve Index test app (to check if you PC is suitable for the Index)
is only available for Windows?

Imho future isn't bright for Linux gaming.

[Ardje]

I been using steam in linux since before we had a native client.
Recently i got asked to participate in survey for the first time ever in linux so it's not like they probe linux users very often.

I got probed twice when I was fixing old installations of my gpd win2 and gpd win (because due to battery bloat they have been on the shelf for more than 6 months waiting for replacement batteries to arrive).
I thought, what is this? But on my steam machine, my previous gaming rig, or my current gaming rig (thinkpad t430 with an rx-580 eGPU), I've never seen it.
Also it couldn't correctly identify a touch screen, twice.

[Ardje]

If Valve is still behind a Linux strategy they believe in, they would try to further push
big devs to release native builds.

We can see from Google Stadia, that does not really work.
Valve is doing a lot for the Linux community, and uses a lot of Linux to make things progress.
But personally as a long time linux gamer and not having any windows install except for when I need to reverse engineer drivers, native builds are a pain for the customer. And a really big ass pain. I can play any windows game (that is not even playable on recent windows) from 2000, but none of the original linux games I had on CD/DVD work.
For now the windows API is middleware that can be easily supported thanks to proton. (proprietary) Linux games however are depending on the glibc version of the month.

If you followed what Valve is doing, you would have noticed that they are trying to address exactly that issue. They are trying to create containers to encapsulate a game as a very thin virtual machine by including all the legacy dependencies in that container.
So that's thumbs up for security (better security than on windows), and thumbs up for the life time of a game.
Only opensource games can trump that.

But yeah, I've been rebuying a lot of games I had on linux, but now the original windows version, so I can just click play, instead of looking for old libs, and try to get it to work.
Don't get me wrong, every $ spent on those games in that time was $ well spent. Support with $ where possible, and in this case I support Valve by buying on Steam, and not starting a steam client on windows. Every $ I spent on valve I get that 100 times back in advanced drm features in the kernel, driver fixes, and general R&D on things like VR.

The fun fact is that even just trying to get games working on Proton shows the enormous amount of bugs windows developers make. And they can make their games better thanks to that. The other way around also exists: the guy blaming the linux kernel on bad spinlocking got an actual tutorial about how to lock better, and he can now make his windows game work better thanks to that. So yeah, thanks to Proton or native porting, bugs are solved.