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

[phoronix]

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

Valve just published their Steam Survey numbers for December 2020 and it's a huge letdown for Linux gamers if the numbers are indeed accurate...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Valve-Steam-December-2020

[theriddick]

Hmmm, everyone probably rushed back to Windows for CP2077 release since its a bit fiddly to get it running decently under steam/proton (people still have issues with experimental).

I played CP2077 90% on windows10 and %10 on Linux, win10 of cause ran better but the game consistently has performance issues and memory leaks so its very hard to compare most the time.

[fagnerln]

This is calculated by machines or users? Because if it's calculated by users, those numbers are inflated by banned accounts, bots and smurfs

[Chugworth]

As surprisingly good as Linux gaming has gotten, it's still just for nerds. Even some of the games that have a gold rating on ProtonDB still require a bunch of tweaks and fiddling around just to get them to start. And I have seen some games that start up and appear to work correctly, but have really bizarre visual bugs.

The way Valve has handled Linux has always struck me as kind of odd. It was a big surprise that they even supported Linux in the first place, and then they tried pushing their Steam Box WAY too soon. They need to have a small team who are dedicated to going through their game database, finding what patches and tweaks are necessary to make a game work correctly, and integrate those into the installation process for the game. They've got to try to make as many games as possible run effortlessly. If they could ever get to that point, then they might could actually find a market for a Steam Box.

[Guest]

macOS has higher usage than Linux. With Steam. An OS that most people here would laugh at for most general use, let alone gaming, has more users than Linux.

Personally I prefer gaming on Linux, but ever since I got a VR headset, I had no real choice but to use Windows if I wanted to use the thing. I started out with a CV1, and OpenHMD doesn't have full positional support with it yet. I have a Quest 2 now, and the only possible hope that has for Linux support is via ALVR. I don't plan on buying an Index at its current price. The only other headset outside of that that I'm aware of would work on Linux is an original Vive.

[StarterX4]

Windows 7 64 bit
26.74%
+22.35%

Simplified Chinese
47.18%
+30.22%

What xD

[bridgman]

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.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/

Presumably some ballots went missing

Even stranger the jump in CPU brand doesn't show up in the graph on the main page.

Windows 7 64 bit
26.74%
+22.35%

Simplified Chinese
47.18%
+30.22%

What xD

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.

That would be a great flash mob event - find a way to disable or hack the Great Firewall, then ten million people all do whatever it is that triggers the Steam survey at the same time before the firewall goes back up.

[tildearrow]

Ugh, by the next month it will be 0% for Linux.

And even with 0% I am surprised that Valve still supports us as first-class...

[ATFx]

Its likely these dips have just been the same people switching back and forth.

[rabcor]

well at least 50.9% of linux users are optimistic