Steam On Linux Gaming Usage Grew In April

Valve just published the updated Steam Hardware/Software Survey results for April 2022 providing a look at the Linux marketshare for April among other interesting metrics.

The April 2022 numbers have been of particular interest since it was the second full month since the Steam Deck began shipping to consumers and production ramping. Valve still hasn't been entirely clear about how Steam Deck will be treated in the Steam Survey if at all. So far at least in my Steam Deck use I haven't seen any Steam Survey prompt nor any of the survey data changes correlating to Steam Deck software/hardware.

Back for March 2022 Steam on Linux hit 1.00%. April 2022? Coming in at a healthy 0.14% gain bringing it now up to 1.14%. The 1.14% is still off the ~2% highs seen in the early days of Steam on Linux as a percentage of the user base, but considering the absolute user-base gains since that point, it's likely a peak (or around the peak) for Linux gaming in absolute numbers. In recent times, the peak for the Steam on Linux marketshare was 1.16% back in November.

Seeing a 0.14% bump over the course of the month may indicate that Steam Deck / SteamOS 3 is being tracked as part of the survey as there hasn't been any high profile Linux native game releases the past month or any other direct attribute for the increase besides overall interest stemming from the Steam Deck / SteamOS. As for the individual Linux distributions reported in the Steam Survey, it shows Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS still out in front with an increase of 0.03%, Arch Linux with a 0.02% increase, and Manjaro Linux with a 0.01% increase.

Windows meanwhile commands a 96.31% marketshare on Steam for the past month and macOS at 2.55%. The Linux specific survey results show Intel losing another 0.54% CPU marketshare now at 57.93% to AMD at 42.06%. In comparison the Steam Windows results show Intel with a 68% marketshare to AMD at 31%.

See the April 2022 Steam Survey results in full via store.steampowered.com