Steam Linux Usage Pulled Back A Bit In December: 0.97%

[Luke_Wolf]

Adoption of vulkan will enable game developers to publish more titles to linux platform (SteamOS) natively without much cost or trouble added (as is the case with OpenGL). Vulkan is much easier to debug, they can use shaders written for directx 12 through SPIR-V. Even if they're using their in-house game engine, considering the fact that android will go with vulkan immediately after 1.0, turning their directx engine to vulkan is a great plus for them. I guess this number will rise to minimum 3 percent within the next two years (Steam machines and other linux combined). Apple number will rise too if they dump metal and support vulkan.

It is incredibly unlikely that Apple's numbers will rise even if they adopt vulkan because gaming on OS X is compromised for more reasons than support for graphics APIs, As far as I'm aware the lack of pointer locking never got resolved for example, which is vital for many games to work properly. That said while I don't really see Linux desktop share as tripling in proportion to the rest of the ecosystem over the next 2 years, it's entirely possible that SteamMachines will take up to 20-30% of the Steam share if we assume that it will fill out to be competitive with one of the consoles in terms of share over the next 5 years.

[LeJimster]

No Witcher 3? ✓
No GTA V? ✓
No Fallout 4? ✓
*snip*....

I agree about the AAA titles, but a lot of games companies making these titles can't get funding for something with little market share, this is how the publishers think. Look at Blizzard, they have billions in the bank, yet even they wont do Linux and considered "crowd funding" to port titles, ridiculous I know.

We just have to hope the SteamOS gains some traction and the linux user base does actually grow at the same time for gamers.

As for performance on wine, while it is a long way behind Windows in terms of raw performance, I think in the last 18 months we've had a big stride forward in the form of CSMT. Coupled with a good nvidia GPU you are going to find most games play pretty well. When it comes to AMD (which I use), it's hit and miss with gallium-nine & wine. But when it does work, it tends to work VERY well.

[DanL]

Linux doesn't have 99% of Window's AAA and A games, so 1% linux usage is exactly the right number.
Nothing else is needed to be discussed.

What needs to be discussed is if wine installs should count as LInux or better yet, if Steam Linux integrated wine and could launch the Windows-only titles I bought.

[DanL]

Inb4 butthurt crybabies desperately trying to explain why these numbers are accidentally underestimating Linux (always, only Linux) usage by at least an order of magnitude for the 50th time in a row.

If this kind of thing is all you have to contribute, go away.

[theriddick]

Fallout 4 and Craptastic AMD drivers are the likely source to blame.

[glxextxexlg]

it's entirely possible that SteamMachines will take up to 20-30% of the Steam share if we assume that it will fill out to be competitive with one of the consoles in terms of share over the next 5 years.

And obstacles appear here through my binoculars. What makes steam machines competitive against any other console? Is it hardware? No, it's not a specialized hardware built for games like in a PS or any other console. Is it software? No, linux (while working great for me personally) has in fact genetic disadvantages against other operating systems in terms of gaming performance and there's no clue that it will ever have better performance working on a vulkan path compared to rival APIs or vulkan on different OS... Is it price? Definitely not, you can have better performance for the money with enthusiast PC builds. Seems to me there's only one possibility left: more games & new games hypothesis.. In this scenario after the adoption of vulkan, other consoles stay with their respective APIs and over some years of evolutionary timeframe steam machines (linux) ends up with having more games compared to weakest competitor console and at the same time ends up having an advantage of faster release of new games compared to that console. That's a hard nut to crack.. But doable nontheless.

[ElectricPrism]

Linux will never have a userbase because it's a freggin Kernel.

Android/Linux? Yeah It's got games
Chromebook/Linux? Yeah
SteamOS/Linux? Yeah games already here and on the way

Linux is too ambiguous, we don't say PS4/BSD or OSX/BSD

Lordie Lordie So they're saying that Windows market share increased after Black Friday likely synonymous with sales of $200 trash 1-core Windows Laptops - I'm shocked! But at least they can play Minecraft or Portal 1.

[gamerk2]

Stupid question. How came that steam is publishing a survey, if they could publish exact usage statistics. Even if they don't collect them, they should be able to tell what games have been bought for which platform, right?

Legal issues. For example, Valve may not be legally able to disclose how many keys for a certain publishers game are sold.

A survey is more accurate anyway, since it counts only those people actively using the platform. If you counted all users for all time, I'm sure the Linux share would drop an additional 90%.

[gamerk2]

Adoption of vulkan will enable game developers to publish more titles to linux platform (SteamOS) natively without much cost or trouble added (as is the case with OpenGL). Vulkan is much easier to debug, they can use shaders written for directx 12 through SPIR-V. Even if they're using their in-house game engine, considering the fact that android will go with vulkan immediately after 1.0, turning their directx engine to vulkan is a great plus for them. I guess this number will rise to minimum 3 percent within the next two years (Steam machines and other linux combined). Apple number will rise too if they dump metal and support vulkan.

Call me when someone takes the time to make the tools necessary for super-low level debugging like DX has had for a decade now. Likewise, most engines have already added DX12 support, so development for DX12 titles is already well underway, where we're still waiting on Vulkan. You are going to see the same DX/GL dynamic you currently do; nothing is changing.

[gamerk2]

I agree about the AAA titles, but a lot of games companies making these titles can't get funding for something with little market share, this is how the publishers think. Look at Blizzard, they have billions in the bank, yet even they wont do Linux and considered "crowd funding" to port titles, ridiculous I know.

Like any business, AAA publishers answer to the shareholders. And it's impossible to cost-justify porting a title to Linux when you consider the long term support you also need to provide. Just imagine the negative publicity that would result if a MESA update broke title X two years after release and the publisher doesn't want to spent the time/money to fix the problem. Not worth it; they can't cost justify it. Nevermind doing it "right", which would require re-coding the entire graphical backend from scratch.

Case in point: Batman: Arkham Knight. And that was a XB1 to Windows port gone wrong, and the XB1 is basically Win 8 with a ton of stuff ripped out. Imagine what a Linux port would look like.