Steam On Linux Metrics End Out 2022 With Some Odd Numbers

Valve has just published the Steam Survey results for December 2022 that come in at a bit of a surprise.

As published in early December and remained the numbers up until today, the November 2022 metrics put Steam on Linux at a 1.44% marketshare as a 0.16% increase over October. The November results pointed toward gains in the Linux marketshare as a result of increased Steam Deck usage based on the SteamOS Holo and AMD Custom GPU 0405 data points.

Steam Linux percentages for November 2022.

Steam Linux percentages for December 2022 with a "weird" percentage increase for month-over-month.

But making things odd is the December 2022 report putting the Linux marketshare up 0.10%, but the percentage marketshare at 1.38%... Or 0.06% lower than than November's numbers. So it's yet another case of re-calculated numbers or other oddities from the Steam Survey results.

The original November data put macOS at 2.45% and Windows at 96.11% while the newly-published December data has Windows at 96.15% with a reported 0.35% decline and macOS at a 0.25% increase to 2.48%. Again, not aligning at all from Valve's prior month data.

Making the December numbers all the more odd is that when pulling up the Linux-only survey data it shows a 0.91% decline for SteamOS Holo (though a 0.77% increase to the Flatpak Steam), the AMD CPU marketshare falling by 0.84%, and the AMD Custom GPU 0405 percentage falling by 0.90%. Or in other words, the Steam Deck marketshare of Linux gamers contracting by just under 1% for the month of December. That's rather unusual considering the success of the Steam Deck and Valve continuing to ship vastly more units each week and it being the main driver right now for Linux gaming adoption.

So either the random element of the Steam Survey selection was rather bonkers for December or there is other odd things happening with the Steam Survey that seem to happen every so often. We'll see if the numbers get revised in the days ahead while for now you can find the current data at SteamPowered.com.

UPDATE: Valve Revises Steam Survey Results For December - Still Pointing Down For Linux