Valve's Steam Data For December Points To A Huge Dip For Linux Gaming Marketshare

[Setif]

Simple answer: China.

[stormcrow]

China was a massive driver for some reason. As a demographic it has enough sway to massively skew numbers for the rest of the world. Most of those Chinese numbers are going to be low(er) end Intel chips with (likely pirated) Windows installations. As I've said for years, without raw numbers it's impossible to know if there really was a change in Linux usage as opposed to market share. The only ones that get the raw numbers are the development houses.

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if it's a bit of both. Linux gaming has indeed come a long way, but it's still a craptastic gaming experience compared to Windows and even MacOS. Lack of AAA releases targeting Linux is probably the least problem it faces as a gaming platform.

MacOS numbers going down, also not surprising because Apple computers have practically no presence in the Chinese market. Most of the Apple computer market is here in the US I believe.

I'd like to see those numbers without China's influence.

[qarium]

There's a lot of wierdness in the December numbers - if you look at Windows CPU brand there's a 7% shift from AMD to Intel, vs less than 1% changes in previous months.
Oh that's interesting... there was also a big jump (11% IIRC) in low clocked Intel CPUs. Maybe a bazillion old internet cafe machines just got connected to the internet for the first time, although the numbers seem too big even for that.

for me it looks very logically and the conclusion is nothing like AMD should thread desktop linux as second class citizens... why?

for like 10 years now there is one market AMD avoid at all cost it is the ultra-low-cost ultra lowend market. AMD was always good in mid-range hardware in 2017-2020 AMD was even good in highend market (threadripper i bought 2 myself) and also performance per dollar.
but anytime i see people buy the cheapest notebook or cheapest desktop pc possible on the market it was always intel. you have to spend at minimum 50-100€ more to get even the low-end AMD systems. anyone can check this on geizhals.at for years.

and it is clear why this is so... AMD need to make money and stay profitable and in the ultra low-end market the profitability margins is very low means AMD saves money on not to compete with intel at this market.

but poor countries like china just buy tonns and millions of these ultra cheap computers.

now what happens if communist china disable the great firewall and stop economic war against the West/usa the result is something like this:

Windows 7 64 bit
26.74%
+22.35%
Simplified Chinese
47.18%
+30.22%

also your commend:
"if you look at Windows CPU brand there's a 7% shift from AMD to Intel, vs less than 1% changes in previous months.[..]there was also a big jump (11% IIRC) in low clocked Intel CPUs"

AMD Avoid ths ultra low-end markat for like over 10 years means as soon as poor china hit the internet because great firewall and economic war against the west is gone it is very logical that intel and low-mhz systems pop up like crazy.

but if AMD thinks these low-end costumers are better customers than linux users who tend to buy AMD anyway (even bulldozer FX8350 was better on linux than a 2700K/3770K) and also buy higend hardware more vram 1GB vs 8GB(windows vs linux) more ram and more cores and more mhz.

if AMD think they make better business on ultra low-end chinese computers with profitability margins of ZERO than to make business with 0.57% market share Desktop Linux people.

according to the statistic Linux Desktop people are in fact the market with the highenst profitability margins... it is like this: you need 100 chinese low-end customers in market share to get the same money from 1 single Desktop Linux user.

this means it is complete insanity that windows 7 drivers from AMD are better than the linux drivers.

AMD should stop watching Market share numbers (with chinese customers of profitability margins of ZERO) and start to fokus on customers with high profitability margins like the Linux Desktop users.

[deemon]

Windows 7 64 bit
26.74%
+22.35%
Simplified Chinese
47.18%
+30.22%

I am quite sure this didn't happen either...

Windows 10 64 bit
69.40%
-19.88%

[qarium]

.

also AMD claimed 6900XT should cost ~1000€ and normal pricefor 3090 is ~1500€
but right now AMD is only 58€ cheaper than Nvidia:

https://geizhals.de/?cmp=2363488&cmp=2448120

1657€(3090) vs 1599€(6900XT)

how is this possible that amd is 500€ higher than expected ?

amd should make sure the price goes lower...

also AMD should produce a 6950XT with 256mb infinity cache instead of 128mb and with water cooling solution for the reference design for the 6950XT...

[stevecrox]

I just don't trust the Steam survey. In 8 years of running linux near exclusively and being opened on a machine with Steam everyday I have seen the survey .. once more than 5 years ago.

Couple years back I put Windows 7 on an ancient laptop to retrieve music from iTunes. It was pre proton so I popped Steam on to try an old game. Instantly the steam survey appeared.

I think there is something broken in the linux client so they don't survey.

[eydee]

I just don't trust the Steam survey. In 8 years of running linux near exclusively and being opened on a machine with Steam everyday I have seen the survey .. once more than 5 years ago.

Couple years back I put Windows 7 on an ancient laptop to retrieve music from iTunes. It was pre proton so I popped Steam on to try an old game. Instantly the steam survey appeared.

I think there is something broken in the linux client so they don't survey.

It's not like that. Steam survey is geared towards fresh installs and almost never pops up on an already used system. It is very likely to pop up on clean OS install when logging into steam for the first time, absolutely regardless of the OS. I get hundreds of them in VMs and test installs while pretty much never on my main system. When doing temporary installs on a larger basis, I even have to keep skipping them to not distort the statistics. One goes to register 100 copies of Mandrake 9.0 or Windows XP and the entire database is fucked.

[loganj]

the most annoying thing about this is that i don't get the survey on linux

[Almindor]

I honestly don't understand why Valve keeps bleeding money for Linux. I say this as a primary Linux user and major FOSS supporter. It just doesn't make business sense. It didn't make one on day one and it doesn't make one now either.

[enigmaxg2]

Definitely something or someone fucked up metrics... there's NO WAY those changes would occur too quickly...