Steam Hardware Survey For September 2014, Linux Rises

Quoting: edoThis rise is probably due to the CSGO port, many people stop using dual-boot due to that.
The next month will be interesting too

Actually, I ceased dual-booting after X-COM came out. I don't miss many of the Windows games I used to play when I did dual-boot,and I expect several of them to suddenly appear in my Steam library, just like Borderlands 2.

Quoting: psyminLinux users are also potentially more privacy conscious than the general population so they might refuse to send data to Valve. In my humble opinion anyway ..

I would like to take the survey to raise the linux share, but it just never appears. I have many hundred hours of steam gameplay under my belt, but the survey never showed up. I saw the survey two times when I was running something via wine, but I cancelled it so that I don't count towards windows. I think something is broken and survey doesn't show to linux users. Maybe the real share is a bit higher.

Quoting: HadBabitsNot sure I agree there. I feel like Linux users who would care more about sending anonymous info for the survey than growing the number of visible Linux users probably aren't using Steam in the first place.

Agreed. Also, the fact that people care about the representation of Linux in these numbers is probably highly indicative of the general mood towards them.

Yes they might not want Valve to know about them, or their computer, but they perceive the survey is important to the future of Linux gaming. In the case of a Windows user, despite potentially placing less value in personal privacy (although, I think this is a pretty wild assumption to make to start with) the actual cost (loss of some privacy) is the same as a Linux user. The bigger difference between the two groups is what you might call the propensity for altruism. A Linux user is more likely to complete the survey because it benefits the greater good (or at least the greater good of the Linux user). A Windows user does not have worries about the representation of their chosen OS. It's unlikely that someone running Windows 8.0 will see a drop in representation of their current OS and feel any level of concern. That this thread exists says that Linux users do.

There is also, obviously, a degree of selfishness in that consistently low representation of Linux in Steam surveys could result in less game availability in the future. Linux users want games after all.

It's likely that this concern about representation translates to increased response rates for Linux users over Windows users. (I have no idea if Mac users care about Steam surveys or not.) A higher response rate would mean that Steam doesn't need to ask as many users on Linux, and hence you see them less often than you might on Windows (where response rates are in theory much lower). It's quite easy for Steam to target differing OS users based on how their client identifies itself to the service. The differing response rates would require demographic correction on some level, so even a large number of users refusing the survey on an OS wouldn't be a problem. Steam would just keep asking people on that OS until they reached a representative sample. (It's possible that the response rate on Windows is an order of magnitude less.) Without any investment in the survey (chance of a prize, etc), most people would not waste their time responding. For example, if a website you frequent pops up a satisfaction survey most people would simply ignore it. The cost/benefit (including the altruistic benefits) ratio is way too low for most people to bother.

It's also very likely that Steam is asking less Linux users as they have gotten repeat data month to month. In the first month that Steam launched on Linux it's quite likely they asked a much higher percentage of users as they would have zero data from the month previous. You would need a much higher number of respondents to have confidence in the stats you were collecting.

I just crunched the stats going back to January, it's interesting. I might make a news post about it a bit later once I have cleaned up the data a bit.

The summary is that there is a (small) aggregate trend upwards in Linux users (slope = 15,000, R2 = 0.452). There's a lot of noise.

The number of active users is in the band of 1M to 1.1M, there seems to be correlation between big game releases and usage. The release of Witcher 2, XCom and CS:GO and Borderlands 2 all correlate with a ~100,000 (temporary) increase in users. This probably suggests that a significant percentage of Linux users dual boot to Windows to play games. (It seems unlikely that these are largely people just trying it out, uninstalling and going back to Windows.)

Here is an idea I have come up with that might be useful to others.

I used to buy extra gift copies to support Linux devs. Then I sometimes gave or traded them to my friends. Some of those friends still partly or fully used Windows. Then Aspyr revealed how things really worked.

My solution; a second Linux account. Whenever I buy a second copy to add to the Linux stats, or more importantly, make sure companies like Feral Interactive and Aspyr get their cut, I gift that to my other account. Then I make sure to launch it there at least once.

If any of my friends need a copy to play multiplayer I will now let them borrow it from my second (guest) account via family sharing, instead of gifting them a copy that would turn into a Windows purchase.

Consider this idea when you think of raising Linux stats. Oh and I recently had the survey, not too long since the second one. My second account then got it almost immediately after having added games to it.

Quoting: neffoI just crunched the stats going back to January, it's interesting. I might make a news post about it a bit later once I have cleaned up the data a bit.

Please do! That sounds really interesting.

The results for our own survey will be out soon too!