Steam On Linux In February Still Residing Below 1%

Valve has released their updated Steam Survey figures for February 2021.

For January, the reported Steam Linux usage hit 0.91%, similar to where it was in November of last year. With the ongoing success of Steam Play (Proton + DXVK/VKD3D-Proton) for running many modern Windows games well under Linux, Steam on Linux has been enjoying the upper sub-1% space on a monthly basis -- normally 0.8~0.9%.

So after being at 0.91% for January, the new February numbers peg the Linux gaming marketshare at 0.81%, or a 0.1% drop compared to the month prior. Granted, it's on a percentage basis and with there continuing to be an ever increasing number of new Steam customers, it's possible that in absolute terms the Linux gaming market didn't contract but potentially stayed the same or perhaps even slightly grew. However, without Valve publishing absolute numbers it's hard to tell as well as many gamers routinely calling into question the validity of the Steam Survey for various reasons.

For year-over-year comparison, February 2020 saw a Linux marketshare of 0.83%, February 2019 was at 0.77%, and February 2018 at just 0.41% in those pre Steam Play times.

For the past month, Windows commanded a 96.13% marketshare while macOS was at 3.06% to Linux's 0.81%. The Linux survey results show Intel shedding another 2% marketshare during February with Linux gamers now running Intel CPUs on 64% of the systems to AMD at 36%. Meanwhile on Windows, Intel still retains a 71% marketshare.

The newest Steam Survey results for February 2021 can be viewed here.