Valve's Steam Survey Shows Linux Gaming Fall To One Of The Lowest Levels Ever

[schmidtbag]

This research is soooo biased. When I used to dual-boot, the research appeared 3 or 4 times for me when I was using Steam from windows and it has never appeared for me when I was using Linux, even though I used to boot windows ONLY to play Dungeonland, Castle Crashers and Polarity.
Now that it has been almost 2 years since I quit dual booting, the research appeared only once for me.

It's not biased. It only comes up when you log in, at random.

The bias is when people run the Windows version of the steam client in Linux, or Linux users who remain logged in for weeks on end.

[Dukenukemx]

I game less on Linux, and that's mostly because new games titles aren't ported to Linux. Most never will be. I like my Fallout 4, Doom, and Dark Souls 3. None of these games will ever see the light of day on Linux, and many more. The solution to this problem is that Valve needs to make a Windows compatibility layer like Wine, but not Wine cause Wine sucks. Everytime a player uses this to play their game on Linux, it should send a message to the developer to encourage them to port their game to Linux.

[cj.wijtmans]

the FFX remaster doesnt even work in wine (d3d11 and .net 4.0).
Its not that linux is not growing its just that its growing slower than windows and macosx.
Probably a relatively large percentage is on wine or dual booting because of lack of ports.
Together with linux users not getting as much surveys and other vars you get these low results.
Perhaps also dissapointment of steamos and the linux distro state.
Perhaps wayland and all these nice new developments in the new kernels and drivers will change all this.

[bcellin]

Thank god I have an indie taste, specially for games. I don't like AAA games so the majority of potentially good games for me receive a Linux version.
Sadly I'm waiting for years for a Castle Crashers port =' (

[b8e5n]

I also play on both, mostly from windows due to windows only games. This month was the first time (as far as I can remember) that I was asked to participate to the survey. The trick is that it first asked me in ubuntu, which I filled in happily, and then it asked me in windows. I ignored it (without refusing), and it came back once every few days... So of course, if all of the people that have both send for both... then we end up with half the share.
One important thing as well, there are more and more gamers every month playing on steam, so if there are no new linux gamers, then it will look like there are less.

[Chewi]

Heh well I've actually been using it more than ever and I've still never seen the survey.

[schmidtbag]

I game less on Linux, and that's mostly because new games titles aren't ported to Linux. Most never will be. I like my Fallout 4, Doom, and Dark Souls 3. None of these games will ever see the light of day on Linux, and many more. The solution to this problem is that Valve needs to make a Windows compatibility layer like Wine, but not Wine cause Wine sucks. Everytime a player uses this to play their game on Linux, it should send a message to the developer to encourage them to port their game to Linux.

Doom has a pretty decent probability of being ported. id Software has been relatively good in the past about it, but this time there's actually more of a market.

Valve doesn't need to make a compatibility layer, they need to give incentives, like developers getting a bigger share of the profits for making Linux releases, or sales specific to Linux users.

For me, my gripe is that so many games are ported so poorly. Many perform like crap (unless you have a 980Ti), some graphics settings don't always work, 5+ button mice don't always work, and surround sound doesn't always work. Personally, I've decided not to buy any more "old" games (specifically, anything at the time of their inception did not have Linux on their roadmap) that have been ported unless there is definitive proof that they are just as capable as their Windows counterparts.

[b8e5n]

Doom has a pretty decent probability of being ported. id Software has been relatively good in the past about it, but this time there's actually more of a market.

Valve doesn't need to make a compatibility layer, they need to give incentives, like developers getting a bigger share of the profits for making Linux releases, or sales specific to Linux users.

For me, my gripe is that so many games are ported so poorly. Many perform like crap (unless you have a 980Ti), some graphics settings don't always work, 5+ button mice don't always work, and surround sound doesn't always work. Personally, I've decided not to buy any more "old" games (specifically, anything at the time of their inception did not have Linux on their roadmap) that have been ported unless there is definitive proof that they are just as capable as their Windows counterparts.

Valve takes 30% of the sales on steam. If they were indeed making a "discount" for multiplatform games, that would motivate most of them to port them from the start.
I was also quite disappointed by some of the ports, due to lacking graphics options, or simply by poor performances. The drivers are better than ever now, but still far from those of windows. I might go for the Rx480 just because ATI is making huge effort to go full open source. That, even though I am fckd and cannot upgrade my ubuntu to keep using closed source GCN1.0 drivers.

[ssokolow]

We really need DRM-free sites like GOG and Humble Bundle Inc. to start generating ongoing, comprehensive (eg. not just "self-reported while paying for each bundle") stats from their Apache/Nginx/etc. logs for:

1. Downloads of Linux installers/archives
2. Downloads of Windows installers/archives performed by Linux user agents.

...then, we'd finally have some hard data on what bias "Freedom, not DRM!" may be introducing into Steam's Linux numbers.

[robcmo]

Something to consider is that most users with SteamOS or Steam on Linux would also have Steam on Windows, thus pushing the percentage of linux machines even lower.