Steam Linux Usage Drops Lower... Below 0.9%

[duby229]

Proof. Show me Proof, other than "from word of mouth", anecdotal evidence. Because that has been shown to be soooo accurate in the past.

If you don't believe what people tell you happens to them, then you won't believe anything anybody tells you.

EDIT: The fact is that marketshare add up to more than 100% Not everybody uses just one OS.

[Doodzor]

You need to read some more. The people that get the survey on linux, repeatedly get it. The people that don't, never get it. Whatever machanism they use misses a whole lot.

You don't have to sample every quantum, but you do need enough sample to have confidence in the margin of error. I don't have any confidence in Valves because of the clearly inaccurate data they make available.

So your argument is that the Steam survey is badly implemented because it produces inaccurate results. And the results are known by you to be inaccurate because you don't agree with them. Three people on the internet confirmed your assessment of those results.

Obviously Valve either has absolutely no idea how to collect statistics at the most basic level (which is VERY unlikely) or they are intentionally harming their own SteamOS platform (because businesses love it when their products fail). Yeah, you don't sound like a total crackpot at all.

[duby229]

So your argument is that the Steam survey is badly implemented because it produces inaccurate results. And the results are known by you to be inaccurate because you don't agree with them. Three people on the internet confirmed your assessment of those results.

Obviously Valve either has absolutely no idea how to collect statistics at the most basic level (which is VERY unlikely) or they are intentionally harming their own SteamOS platform (because businesses love it when their products fail). Yeah, you don't sound like a total crackpot at all.

So instead of making a technical argument, you decide to call names and act like an ass.... You don't sound like a crackpot at all either.

[mao_dze_dun]

Sure, it must be the Witcher 3. Last month it was GTA V. I wonder what will be next month - I'll probably have to check what games gets released in the coming weeks. People are so desperate to deny the utter fact that Linux is still not a good or welcoming gaming platform. But yeah - probably the survey is broken. Saying that a survey is inaccurate because nobody asked you (a single user of something like 130 million people) is the same "rock solid" logic as saying that there is no global warming because it snowed in your town this February. You cannot make global assumptions based entirely on your personal experience.
The only positive spin of this situation is the possibility the Windows user base is just growing at faster rate, while the total number of Linux users remains the same or grows at a slower pace. However, I'm positive that is not the case. Linux sorely lacks triple A releases and the few it gets are extremely broken, i.e. Dying Light, which I hear finally got fixed a couple of days ago. Good for them - took them only 4 months to get there. Fact is the most stable release of an AAA title was of 2 year old title (Bioshock: Infinite) that used a wrapper.
Imagine pitching Linux to a hardcore gamer friend of yours: "It's awesome, free and you can do a ton of cool things with it... but you can't play GTA, Skyrim (wine doesn't count), Assassin's Creed, Need for Speed, Battlefield, FIFA, Dragon Age or 99% of the other big gaming franchises and you're only limited to using Nvidia hardware because AMD drivers offer about a quarter of the Windows performance. Also sometimes you have to jump hoops to install Steam. And Valve only officially supports Steam OS and Ubuntu. Try it - it will be a blast."

[duby229]

No, I wouldn't say linux is a better gaming platform, I mean you just spelled it out in plain language. That's the very reason that most linux users still dual boot. There are still apps and games on windows that they want to use. Now I am beginning to believe it's those dual booters that aren't getting counted as linux users. If they did, the total marketshare numbers would add up to more than 100%. When Valve starts publishing numbers counting people like myself, that's when I'll start believing them.

[Dasher42]

Counting the numbers by platform is a little unfair to people like me. I've been running a Linux-only desktop for years; dual booting is for the birds. I also play Skyrim on Steam through Crossover. I've modded it quite heavily, debugged it, run goofy little tools that are much trickier to get working than Skyrim itself to generate metadata for modded animations and such - all so I can run this in Linux. I've even written little Python scripts to do a bit of the mod management that Windows uses are running GUI tools to do.

Then there's Civilization V. The Linux version doesn't run mods. There we go again.

Age of Empires isn't on my list, fortunately. 0 A.D. is displacing it and an open source native title is my preference any day, if the experience is in the same ballpark. OpenMW, The Dark Mod, FreeCiv, FlightGear, BSG: Diaspora, they're helping, but they've got a ways to go.

What does Steam think I'm running? Thanks, Valve. Actually, thanks, it's not fair to gripe, but give us a chance! Wouldn't even a custom deal with Crossover for a Wine layer that lets us be counted be possible?

[haagch]

Don't forget Project C.A.R.S. that was released about a month ago. It will have a linux version too. I would have liked to see a game like that with oculus rift support. https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/sear...sort=new&t=all. But since a lot of games that support the oculus rift only do so for windows, and since oculus dropped linux support I don't have much hope.

What's with all the games that "will have" linux support, but launch windows-only. And delay the linux version for month after month after months? And then everybody wonders why nobody plays the games on linux?

It's always the same. I could have been playing project cars with my dk2 for a month now. Or I wait a few more months and very likely not play it with my dk2 at all. How many people do that and how many people cave and go to the operating system that even the developers who promise linux support give so much preferential treatment?

In other news, Valve finally is getting ready to release a source 2 dota patch with linux support? Hey, maybe they will finally publish the dota 2 workshop tools for linux. How long have windows users been able to create and play custom games while their friends using linux could not play these custom games with them? It's 10 months now if I'm not mistaken? (I don't like dota 2, but I'd like to play some of the custom games).

Seriously, do people really wonder why people go to windows? Release your stuff for linux and maybe people will play it on linux.

Also recently crytek finally announced some linux stuff. How about the star citizen preview stuff, can we on linux maybe get it too?

Hey, does anyone remember how DICE "strongly wanted to get into Linux"? That was 2013.

https://www.polygon.com/2013/10/12/4826190/linux-only-needs-one-killer-game-to-explode-says-battlefield-director

[duby229]

Dasher42, if you are running steam through wine, it does get counted as a linux system. That assumes you got the survey though.

[sarmad]

I don't think Valve or any of the linux game developers really care about the existing Linux share, their focus is on Steam Machines, because it's the Steam Machines that will put capable Linux hardware in the hands of true gamers. My guess is that by the end of the year Linux share will rise to somewhere between 3% to 5%.

[audi.rs4]

So, I guess you're using a Nvidia GPU?

Borderlands 2 is utter crap on Linux with AMD.
According to an Aspyr employee it's clearly an issue with AMD's Catalyst.
AMD is informed but so far nothing changed.

So in my case, I bought Borderlands 2 to play it on Linux,
but ended up playing it on Windows...

This is not how you convince people to use Linux for gaming.
Yeah, it's anecdotal ... but still.

I just started playing Borderland 2 on Linux last week with my ATI card. I haven't seen any issues so far and it seems to be running smoothly.

I also was just given the Survey yesterday on my Linux machine when logging in. Previously I've only ever been surveyed in Windows as I dual boot, but now for only a select few games.

With games like Batman, GRID Autosports and Payday 2 releasing to Linux this year, the list keeps growing for games available to play. Hopefully they are compatible with a wider range of hardware than the Borderlands ports appears to have been.