Valve Releases New Steam Figures For March

[sirdilznik]

I'm not surprised. Initially there were more people testing the Steam client out or just wanting to check it out and see it in action, but now the "newness" has worn off and most of peoples' games are still on Windows. I play Crusader Kings 2 and Serious Sam 3: BFE on Linux, but most of my games are still on Windows. Once more games appear on Steam Linux the numbers may well go up again, like when the big Kickstarter projects (Shadowrun Returns, Wasteland 2, Broken Age, etc.) start popping up.

Personally I think the Steam Linux experiment has been a success so far. I've enjoyed the experience anyway.

[IanS]

I still say the biggest reason for the drop is due to truncating the values to the hundreth place spread out over just shy of 50 distros. Steam has over 50 million accounts, let's say only 20% of those are active and responding to the survey. That is still 10 million accounts, to get to even 0.01% of that a distro would need at least 100k Steam users while just 0.001% would still be ~10k accounts. If they are just doing a simple floor truncation then upwards of 99,999 accounts get tossed out for just a single distro alone if these hypothetical numbers are remotely accurate; could be a lot more, though probably not much less. So even dropping just 0.005% from each of the 47 distros could mean 2.35 million Linux users or more slipping through the cracks.

My bad, I should of checked the math, rereading it I thought something seemed off. Seems I had everything shifted over 2 places in my haste. So sticking with the 10m example:
- 0.01% = 1k
- 0.001% = 100
- upwards of 999 accounts don't get counted per distro
- 0.005% from each of the 47 listed distros would = ~23.5k users or more unaccounted for

Still a bit surprised no one else caught that before me. >.<

[Alliancemd]

Re

The higher percentage was because of the initial hipe. That always happens: games at release, movies... All the people want to try it out and than they lose interest. We'll see what will happen when bigger titles appear but I doubt a lot will change, that was pretty much the pick, all the interested Linux users jumped to try it out in January...

[nightmarex]

Things will change if Ubuntu/Shuttleworth can get the vision of Mir to fruition.

Yes he said it... Leave it alone don't feed the troll we have too many post in specifics placed to bring it in this thread... please please please ignore it.

[e8hffff]

Just wanted to say the games I purchased on Steam are high quality experiences. I think the way the games ran and the sound and graphics far surpassed Windows based gaming. The problem is Windows attracts the new titles since they have sound and graphics standards and numbers.

Things will change if Ubuntu/Shuttleworth can get the vision of Mir to fruition.

[IanS]

I still say the biggest reason for the drop is due to truncating the values to the hundreth place spread out over just shy of 50 distros. Steam has over 50 million accounts, let's say only 20% of those are active and responding to the survey. That is still 10 million accounts, to get to even 0.01% of that a distro would need at least 100k Steam users while just 0.001% would still be ~10k accounts. If they are just doing a simple floor truncation then upwards of 99,999 accounts get tossed out for just a single distro alone if these hypothetical numbers are remotely accurate; could be a lot more, though probably not much less. So even dropping just 0.005% from each of the 47 distros could mean 2.35 million Linux users or more slipping through the cracks.

[GreatEmerald]

Another plausible explanation is that less people used steam on Linux for this period. Some people could have tried Steam initially but then stopped using it. I am one such person.

No, the deltas wouldn't be overwhelmingly positive in that case. Percentages show one thing, deltas show another thing entirely, that's the main oddity here.

[nightmarex]

7870 and 6550 both play all the games I own for steam flawless.
My Nvidia card (GT 520) plays without problems as well.

I think most people say the Linux driver situation is bad because they think about times passed.

[duby229]

I'd put money on it mostly being numbers 3 and 4 from that list, with an emphasis on 3. I've got plenty of Linux games on Steam to play right now, but I wish that HL2, Portal 1/2, and CS:GO were released. Well, that and Civ 5.

I've got a radeon 6850 w/ r600g on a phenom II x6 1055t, and TF2 runs just fine on my machine (at 1920x1200). Most of the other games I've got installed are less demanding than that. But then, the most graphically intensive games I own are GS:GO, BF:BC2, Borderlands 1, or GRID. I have a suspicion that half of those games would perform acceptably if released in Linux w/ OpenGL.

My biggest problem at the moment is actually Skype. I get some nasty audio distortion on my system when I use Skype for voice chat, which prevents me from using it during my TF2 sessions.

I've got a 6850 too and I couldnt be more happy with it. It plays everything I throw at it at my monitors resolution of 1680x1050. What more could you ask for really? A card that plays everything you throw at it at your monitors top resolution is kinda the point.

r600g is a pretty good driver.

I think these linux numbers just reflect that many of the games that folks want to play havent been ported yet. In addition alot of the rounding is to 0.00% which counts as nothing. Even so it couldn't be more than a quarter percent off tho, so not a real big deal.

[e8hffff]

1. the novelty worn off

2. only people with nvidia cards are able to properly play games (bla bla bla stfu, everyone knows amd and intel perf suck in linux)

3. windows users who just wanted to get the penguin for free

4. old old old games, I mean OLD games that I played when I was a kid, cs etc

Can't agree more on point 4. I own a GTX 660 so the ATI problems I left behind last year.

The top shelf games they are porting are mostly old titles that the essence has all but dried up in. New games should be new releases.

The problem is game developers need solid standards for graphics and sound. You either do this with wrappers, or the distributors need to concrete standard in with modern able drivers and routines. Ubuntu's Mir maybe the preferred choice for developers coming from other platforms.