Valve's Steam July 2020 Numbers Point To A Small Dip For Linux

While some platforms like Netmarketshare have reported increases month-over-month for Linux desktop usage, that doesn't appear to be translating similarly to the Linux gaming market-share, or at least not at the rate Steam is growing on Windows and macOS. Valve has just published their July 2020 numbers that are part of the Steam Survey.

The newest Steam Survey data puts the Steam on Linux marketshare at 0.86%, or a reported 0.05% decline from the month prior. While that difference can almost amount to a rounding error, that -0.05% doesn't line up with what Valve originally reported for June. Up until today, Valve reported the June numbers at 0.88% for Linux, which would then just be a 0.02% drop for July. This isn't the first time we have seen this happen where the survey numbers seem to get revised when the next month's data rolls out.

In any case, these numbers point to another month of sub-1% Linux gaming marketshare but at least off the much smaller percentages that were seen in 2017~2018'ish prior to the introduction of Steam Play / Proton.

While Linux is at 0.86%, the July numbers show macOS dropping 0.84% to 3.2% and Windows increasing by 0.89% to a 95.95% marketshare.

The survey continues to put Ubuntu 20.04 as the most popular Linux distribution, overtaking Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. When looking at just the Linux platform data, they show Intel continuing to erode marketshare now at just 69%, a 2.46% drop compared to the month prior and well off the days of 80%+ Intel CPUs on Linux. The Linux data also still has the Radeon RX 480/580 Polaris as being most popular along with the GeForce GTX 1060 for graphics cards. 52% of Linux gamers are still running 1080p as their default resolution.

The July 2020 Steam Survey results can be found on SteamPowered.com.