Valve's Steam Survey Numbers For October Just Point To More Inaccuracies

With the start of a new month we are always eager to see what Valve reports via their "Steam Survey" for Linux usage (among other stats) for the month prior. The October 2019 numbers are now published but they don't indicate any Linux change in marketshare but with some odd indications.

The Linux numbers for October 2019 as of this evening are shown as 0.83% with a +0.03% increase over September. An increase is nice, but those Linux numbers are the same as what was said for September and the +0.03% compared to August.

Thinking the Steam Survey month was updated but not the actual data, that didn't turn out to be the case. When looking at the archived data, the Windows numbers for September shows Windows at 96.1% as a -0.1% drop over the month prior and macOS at 3.07% as a 0.08% increase.

But when looking at the current data as of writing it shows macOS as 3.14% increase with a 0.15% increase over the month prior (rather than 3.07% / +0.07% increase) and the Windows numbers are shown at 96.02% / -0.18% decrease. In comparison, the Windows numbers for September were previously reported at 96.1%, which would equate to a 0.08% decrease.

So the Steam Survey numbers are updated for October, but certainly not aligning to what was reported for September in comparison. Then again, it's far from the first time we have seen Steam monthly survey numbers that simply don't add up at this point, either due to issues in their recording or other factors they later rectify. Though at the end of the day it doesn't appear the Steam Linux gaming marketshare hasn't changed much if anything significant since September.