Linux Drops Below 1% On The Steam Hardware Survey

Bad times :(

It should also be known that there is a margin of error. Linux usage could be 1% exact and look like 1.03 one month and .97 the next and not of budged. Liam are you being paid to say lovely things about the 970? You seem to go on about it often.

Quoting: XzylIt should also be known that there is a margin of error. Linux usage could be 1% exact and look like 1.03 one month and .97 the next and not of budged. Liam are you being paid to say lovely things about the 970? You seem to go on about it often.

You got me, I'm a paid Nvidia PR person :P

Quoting: liamdaweWe will never get an accurate representation, ever.

The number of people downloading an Steam client update for the respective OS should be a very good representation of active users and is very easy to obtain for Valve. (They might reduce it by id to eliminate double downloads, but I guess that's not even a relevant amount, so they could do it without touching privacy concerns.)

When was the last time any of you had the survey on Linux? I haven't had it on either Windows or Linux in well over a year & as has been said before this is a survey that doesn't include every single user of Steam, if it did the results would make interesting reading indeed.

Quoting: lucifertdarkWhen was the last time any of you had the survey on Linux? I haven't had it on either Windows or Linux in well over a year & as has been said before this is a survey that doesn't include every single user of Steam, if it did the results would make interesting reading indeed.

When have you been last asked in voting polls? Does that make them invalid?

Yeah they are doing these surveys all wrong. They need to start giving every user a survey each month(not this random "i might get one", bull crap). Or have their system do a automatic OS scan for each user when they login to steam, and then put up the results. Also i know they like to show the different distributions, and some people like to see what different ones people use to play steam on, but is it really needed? Cant it just say Linux? For those distros that dont show up on there, are they actually getting accounted for? If they cant manage to send a survey to each user once a month, couldn't they add a section in the steam client to take that survey once a month?

Sorry for the ranting, but it's like we are being shown to the developers as a "still declining os for the gaming market", when its not our fault that we all aren't getting the chance to show them our numbers. I know a lot of the devs who are doing great in Linux sales are appreciative, and happy they made the choice to support us, but the ones who are thinking about it, or are not sure if they should, aren't going to have much enthusiasm, if these numbers are dropping because of the lack of surveys.

Also! (a bit off topic).. The way steam determines what sales go to which OS; i think that needs to change as well. I think it should just be by client, and not "what OS you play it on the most during the first week". It doesn't make any sense. If you buy a game on the steam android app, then i could see OS determined by what you play it on. So call me crazy, but i do sometimes find a windows game on steam for sale at a very high discount, and i will purchase it, just cause i have wanted that game, and id have it for any future chance of it coming to Linux. Until then i dont play it. Now if that sale right there is accounted as a Linux purchase cause i bought it on the Linux steam client, that could also show the developers (if more people on Linux did the same), that people are interested in wanting to see it come to Linux. Or it could be (That person might be dual booting, and has a windows OS, but he just bought it on his Linux partition, and will go back to play it on Windows) type thing. Who knows. It's all things that could potentially help encourage devs to bring more of their games to Linux.

Maybe its just me venting, but im glad i threw out some of my thoughts on the subject.

I will stop now..haha

-Minty-Linux-

Quoting: EikeWhen have you been last asked in voting polls? Does that make them invalid?

Well actually it does, there's 125 Million users & unless they ask every single one of them the 1% figure only covers the number they actually asked, they could have asked as little as 100 people. Unless we know how many people are included in the survey they're no use whatsoever.

I just hope Aspyr or Feral will port GTA 5 to Linux, seems like that would require a lot more of work compared to other games. Since Rockstar is part of the Vulkan group, well, at least we can dream about they doing the port by themselves in the future.

This is like checking a long term investment on a daily basis. Let's just chill and check it every semester or so.

I think the problem actually is most people which dualboots doesn't use steam linux ad the primary client. Valve should make an experiment launching hl3 1 month before on linux than on win. There se could cpunt the exact steamos linux clients.

Quoting: OrkultusYeah they are doing these surveys all wrong.

Based on 125 million users, to get 95% confidence that their results are within 0.1% of the actual values they would need 953077 completed surveys, or about 0.76% of their user base each month. Put another way: a typical user would be asked to fill in a survey less frequently than once every hundred months on average.

Sample size calculator: http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

GTA V doesn't affect my usage at all, Pillars of Eternity got me gaming natively for a little bit, but in the end I keep going back to wine for good old Dark Souls.

I still don't entirely trust the hardware survey. I've been using Steam for Linux for about 2-years, ever since it was a public beta, and I have never been asked to complete a survey while using Linux. But in that same period of time, I can recall two instances where the survey popped up when I was using Windows, which is a strange coincidence considering just how infrequently I boot into Windows these days (we're talking months between Windows logins). And I know I'm not alone since I've other people who have had the same experience. How to explain this anomaly? It makes you wonder if there's a bug in Steam for Linux that is causing it not to trigger the survey.

I haven't had a survey pop in a long time, but then I am using Big Picture only and due to the stability of my operating system, I don't have to restart or reinstall very often - maybe that has something to do with the lack of triggering?

On the flip side, my friend reinstalled Windows on his laptop and got the survey immediately. And he didn't even fill it out. I am willing to bet that many Windows users don't bother submitting, because they're more likely to find it to be a waste of time and annoyance, whereas Linux users probably want to be counted... That's just speculation, but I believe it's very likely. And this makes our numbers even more pathetic.

Quoting: wintermute

Quoting: OrkultusYeah they are doing these surveys all wrong.

Based on 125 million users, to get 95% confidence that their results are within 0.1% of the actual values they would need 953077 completed surveys, or about 0.76% of their user base each month. Put another way: a typical user would be asked to fill in a survey less frequently than once every hundred months on average.

Sample size calculator: <a href="http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" style="cursor:help;display:inline !important;">http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm</a>

There's more to an accurate survey than just sample size. You need to ensure that it cuts evenly and proportionately across demographics. For instance, a political survey that polled primarily low-information Democrat voters would give a biased result regardless of sample size. This is why the reputable pollsters basically hand-pick their sample to ensure that it's representative. Valve's random, opt-in sampling is pretty much the worst way to conduct a survey.

I agree with the above comment somewhat. This survey should always be taken with a huge truck load of salt.

The problem is that all developers we have spoken too always give us sales figures close to the survey numbers, so can the real number be that far off?

Honestly, unless everyone who dual boots for stuff like GTA suddenly did the survey on Windows it really wouldn't make that much difference.

Either way we are growing, as the total number of Steam users grows every month, so even if our % stays small or shrinks by a small amount, our overall number still grows.

Quoting: liamdaweThe problem is that all developers we have spoken too always give us sales figures close to the survey numbers, so can the real number be that far off?

This is exactly it. There's simply no reason to doubt the numbers. They fit into the big picture perfectly.
The Linux desktop statistics, and we now talk about desktop users, not just Linux gamers, are hovering around 2.5% globally (varies a bit on what source you read, but it's roughly there).

So there's no need to doubt what the numbers tells us, no reason to scream for foul play or doubtful poll practises here - we are small. Period. That's just the sober state of fact at this point in time.

Idc if linux is under 1%.... last week I went back to Windows because I had issues in Ubuntu Mate 14.10 with my new mobo (sound issue) and while being in Windows I just got angry at how clunky the OS is. Not to mention the issues I faced with having to unplug/plug my mouse at every boot.
I quickly installed Ubuntu Mate 15.04 and tested everything and once I got it all working again it was bye bye Windows time.

The only title I was actually playing extra on Windows was Diablo3... and I've got that working perfectly now via PlayOnLinux.

I think the Steam survey is not really accurate, I think we have a lot more Linux gamers but since people do dual boot it takes some of the count away.

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: liamdaweThe problem is that all developers we have spoken too always give us sales figures close to the survey numbers, so can the real number be that far off?

So there's no need to doubt what the numbers tells us, no reason to scream for foul play or doubtful poll practises here - we are small. Period. That's just the sober state of fact at this point in time.

Sure, but these numbers mean that we have at least 3 times more users since the first survey. Which also tells us that the developers have 3 times the number of sales at they had before. THERE is a growth, just don't get fixated on the ~1%. Look at the numbers behind!

I scream about foul play if I get the survey on windows only. On windows it pops up. Cool! Lets start Steam on Linux ... Nothing. Back to Windows and the survey shows up. Back to Linux ... Nothing. Back to Windows again. Yeah! Survey. And so on. EVERY MONTH! Is that really fair play? Nope!