The Latest Steam Hardware Survey Shows Very Little Difference

I find myself more and more on GoG though, so yup not had steam on for several weeks :)

Quoting: NyamiouI've just restarted my PC by accident (walked on the power plug) and got the survey, the survey only appear when Steam start so if like me you rarely restart your computer and you never stop Steam it's not going to appear often.

I am someone who doesn't restart the PC (laptop) often. When going to bed i just close it so i do only restarts at updates (kernel distro...)

Quoting: NyamiouAlso you need to be an active user to have the survey, so if you haven't played much don't expect to have a chance.

When I once booted into Windows I got it, but hopefully others do not activate it when it occurs on "Linux only: accidentally using Win"

Will see with Steam Machines, maybe will jump to 3-5%.

I find it hard not to have negative feelings about Linux being successful here. I just hope that all the stakeholders involved in the Linux push understand that this is a moon shot project that will only show returns way later down the line. I really think that the cold shoulders from the AAA publishers will make it very hard for success of Steam machines and linux gaming in general.

Quoting: NyamiouI've just restarted my PC by accident (walked on the power plug) and got the survey, the survey only appear when Steam start so if like me you rarely restart your computer and you never stop Steam it's not going to appear often. Also you need to be an active user to have the survey, so if you haven't played much don't expect to have a chance.

I've to disagree with that. I start my PC once a day and shut it down when I go to sleep. It runs at least 3h a day and mostly more. When I am the whole day at home it runs more then 10h, mostly 14h. In this whole time Steam runs from start to shut down and I even couldn't remind my when I had the last survey on Linux (probably once or twice since the client is out). So from my side: No, it is not related to the usage of Steam.

Quoting: Mountain ManWell, this is depressing, although I'm still convinced the survey is deeply flawed. What's even more disheartening is that I see some developers citing the survey as a reason why they won't support Linux even though actual game sales on Linux are between 2% to 5%.

Most publishers state sales between 1 % and 2 %. I personally think that's not a too bad value, if not too much effort has to go into porting an engine.

That said, I have little hope that steam machines will actually raise the market share of Linux. Valve for sure has a long breath on this (they're getting rich with Steam anyway taking a 33 % cut on everything sold), but they'd still need to get a lot of publishers on board, including Activision/Blizzard, EA and others. And EA will do nothing to support Valve or Steam in any way, placing their bet on their own online distribution (both with their own downloaders, not to have to share the profit with Valve "just" for distribution). For getting them on board, the market share would need to be between 5-10 %, so they can't ignore the profit, and that's a a hell long road until that happens.

Quoting: minjHere's a conspiracy theory for you: Valve are keeping the numbers down to artificially increase the effect of launching Steam machines. Alright, alright, that's probably just wishful thinking.

I would actually +1 on that.
One of the reasons, as I see it, for the linux number being so low, is the fact that I have NEVER encountered the survey on a linux desktop - so it's kind of a myth for me. On the other hand, multiple times per year I have received the survey prompt on Windows... strangley enough, right after booting from my linux partition.
So a conincidence or a conspiracy theory - don't know, but it is strange non-theless.

Even if it's only about 1%. The absolute number is still increasing.

My guess is that SteamOS is not counted yet in those numbers. Because why -0.05% on Windows and only +0.02+0.01% on Mac/Linux? Where did the 0.02% gone?
Something weird is going on there.

I'm in the 'depressed about the figures' camp too. Personally, I really don't want to go back to Windows but these numbers feel like the contemporary devout saying that God exists between the atoms -- Linux between percentage points.