The latest Steam Hardware Survey has been released and this time around Linux has actually increased the share by a small amount.
I know, I stopped writing about these for a while because the numbers we're talking about here are a little boring and I don't see it changing much any time soon.
Anyway, here's the current Linux market-share on Steam:
Total Overall: Linux 0.81% +0.05%
Despite popular belief, I consider it to be pretty accurate of the state of things on Steam. Yes it may be different elsewhere, but Steam is serving the gamer market. Every time I talk to a developer, they generally give me sales figures around that mark. We can make any wild claims we like about it being inaccurate, but if it was, more developers would be seeing a different story.
Sure Steam Big Picture and SteamOS aren't counted, but those are likely quite a minority.
Does it paint a terrible picture? Well, not exactly. 0.81% of the overall Steam user-base is still a pretty large amount of people. We have no idea just how many active accounts Steam has right now, but every time they talk about it, it's risen by quite a lot. The last time they spoke about it (end of 2015), it was at 125 million. That would put Linux gamers at well over a million, but that number is likely higher now due to Steam's growth since they last talked about it. How high is anyone's guess, since Valve aren't massively open about that.
Not enough to turn the heads of some important publishers sure, but we have a healthy amount of games flowing in constantly to keep me happy.
Where Linux gaming is right now, is pretty great. We only have to look back a short number of years to remember the great drought of games we had. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I know, I stopped writing about these for a while because the numbers we're talking about here are a little boring and I don't see it changing much any time soon.
Anyway, here's the current Linux market-share on Steam:
Total Overall: Linux 0.81% +0.05%
- Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS 64 bit 0.23% 0.00%
- Ubuntu 17.04 64 bit 0.10% +0.10%
- Linux 64 bit 0.08% 0.00%
- Linux Mint 18.1 Serena 64 bit 0.08% +0.01%
Despite popular belief, I consider it to be pretty accurate of the state of things on Steam. Yes it may be different elsewhere, but Steam is serving the gamer market. Every time I talk to a developer, they generally give me sales figures around that mark. We can make any wild claims we like about it being inaccurate, but if it was, more developers would be seeing a different story.
Sure Steam Big Picture and SteamOS aren't counted, but those are likely quite a minority.
Does it paint a terrible picture? Well, not exactly. 0.81% of the overall Steam user-base is still a pretty large amount of people. We have no idea just how many active accounts Steam has right now, but every time they talk about it, it's risen by quite a lot. The last time they spoke about it (end of 2015), it was at 125 million. That would put Linux gamers at well over a million, but that number is likely higher now due to Steam's growth since they last talked about it. How high is anyone's guess, since Valve aren't massively open about that.
Not enough to turn the heads of some important publishers sure, but we have a healthy amount of games flowing in constantly to keep me happy.
Where Linux gaming is right now, is pretty great. We only have to look back a short number of years to remember the great drought of games we had. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Interesting that Windows actually DROPPED 0.07% last month, while Linux GREW 0.05%. Small numbers, but I like the trend here :P
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GoLBuzzkill Jun 3, 2017
Quoting: GuestLinux has more than 3500 games in steam + more than 2500 games with platinum compatibility in Wine + more than 1000 native games on sites/apps like Lutris, ONEPLAY, LinAPP, HOLARSE, itch.io, GOG, Penguspy, LGDB, GAMEJOLT, and independent sites
= more than 7000 games
If I finish a game completely every 5 days, it would still take me 5 years to play 365 games. So why is only 1% using Linux?
Because all that games run better on Consoles and Windows, they have less bugs on Consoles and Windows, drivers are better on Windows, there is bunch of third party tools, mods, utility for gaming on Windows that does not exist on Linux; also bunch of "AAA" titles that does not exist on Linux. In other words, that are closer to reality, games on Linux are of the lower quality than on Console or Windows counterparts. Is it that hard to figure it out?
In reality games are terible, they all are unoptimized buggy piece of shits, but because Linux ports are lazy translated/mapped ports from Windows and Windows versions are lazy ports from Consoles, Linux versions are biggest shit of them all.
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Quoting: ison111Wasn't everyone saying that Steam Machines don't get counted in the survey?
In my opinion that is a HUGE factor. Because without counting steam machines you're basically completely ignoring the entire audience behind steam supporting Linux in the first place, and all you're left with is mostly just Linux users who'd probably be using Linux on their desktops even if there was no steam Linux client.
Until we know steam machines are being counted and/or steam adds the survey to steam machines if it's not already, then I personally think this statistic is utterly meaningless.
steam machines were an flop.
we didnt had any news about the sales of the machines, but we had about the controller.
500.000
https://www.destructoid.com/valve-has-sold-over-500k-steam-controllers-365274.phtml
2016-06-01 2
steam machines where relased at: Nov 10, 2015.
7 months to sell 500k controllers, the 2 first months tend to be the ones where most of the sells are done.
you dont need an Steam Machine to have one controller, but all Steam machines come with one controller and supports at least 4.
valve didnt say anything about the numbers after that, if they were any good they would.
in other words, even assuming that everyone who purchased one controller had one machine, that would mean an number between 125K and 500K machines sold during that period.
that is very low for an console, they are pretty much floped at this time.
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"Linux has more than 3500 games in steam + more than 2500 games with platinum compatibility in Wine + more than 1000 native games on sites/apps like Lutris, ONEPLAY, LinAPP, HOLARSE, itch.io, GOG, Penguspy, LGDB, GAMEJOLT, and independent sites
= more than 7000 games"
your math dont take into account Intersection.
just a quick visit to winehq and you see that a lot of the platinum games are also on steam for linux (3 on the top 10 list, you cant be that blind)
lutris is not an store, its just an mannager for your librarie.
i didn't even heard of linAPP, ONEPLAY,HOLARSE,Penguspy,LGDB much less an windows user or console player, i dont know even if the keys are legit or are like the g2a keys.
there is no origin or uplay for linux.
plus wine maybe a pain in the ass to configure, no one want configure something when they have time to play, all they want is sit and play.
combine that with what GoLBuzzkill said, and you will realize that from the point of view of an gamer, there is no sense in switching for linux, no advantages only disadvantages, is from the point of view of linux users that what you said matters.
= more than 7000 games"
your math dont take into account Intersection.
just a quick visit to winehq and you see that a lot of the platinum games are also on steam for linux (3 on the top 10 list, you cant be that blind)
lutris is not an store, its just an mannager for your librarie.
i didn't even heard of linAPP, ONEPLAY,HOLARSE,Penguspy,LGDB much less an windows user or console player, i dont know even if the keys are legit or are like the g2a keys.
there is no origin or uplay for linux.
plus wine maybe a pain in the ass to configure, no one want configure something when they have time to play, all they want is sit and play.
combine that with what GoLBuzzkill said, and you will realize that from the point of view of an gamer, there is no sense in switching for linux, no advantages only disadvantages, is from the point of view of linux users that what you said matters.
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GustyGhost Jun 3, 2017
Quoting: elmapulplus wine maybe a pain in the ass to configure, no one want configure something when they have time to play, all they want is sit and play.
combine that with what GoLBuzzkill said, and you will realize that from the point of view of an gamer, there is no sense in switching for linux, no advantages only disadvantages, is from the point of view of linux users that what you said matters.
Not to mention WINE/PoL shit all over your file system. Last I tried, they added unremovable context menus and entries all over my home folder. It's bad enough that some games do that ...but a translation layer? The only games worthy of my time are those that had the effort to support my platform.
*Disclaimer: yeah, yeah.. you can clean out WINE's trash when you're finished but only once you have the knowledge beyond some novice Mint/*buntu user (which I was at the time). Not a good first impression.
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Finding it hard to care about a tiny fluctuation in a statistic I don't trust at all. Even if it's an upward fluctuation, on a meaningless stat that's still meaningless.
The conversation about Linux as a gaming platform: It certainly would still be pretty unreasonable to switch to Linux in order to game. The best that can be said is that, unlike in the past, for most casual gamers, gaming is no longer a barrier to switching if you wanted to for other reasons. This is important; there are lots of reasons to switch to Linux, and one common thing that used to hold people back was "Can I play games?" "Well, um, basically no." Now it's "Can I play games?" "Ehh, about as well as on a Mac." To the extent Vulkan takes hold, within a year I suggest the answer will be, "Better than on a Mac."
Somebody mentioned Asia as a potential reason behind shrinking Linux percentages on Steam. I still have this pipedream where either China gets serious about security from US government hacking or Microsoft makes a big push to stop Windows being pirated in Asia. In either case, we'd see some sudden, massive Linux adoption spikes.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 3 June 2017 at 11:46 pm UTC
The conversation about Linux as a gaming platform: It certainly would still be pretty unreasonable to switch to Linux in order to game. The best that can be said is that, unlike in the past, for most casual gamers, gaming is no longer a barrier to switching if you wanted to for other reasons. This is important; there are lots of reasons to switch to Linux, and one common thing that used to hold people back was "Can I play games?" "Well, um, basically no." Now it's "Can I play games?" "Ehh, about as well as on a Mac." To the extent Vulkan takes hold, within a year I suggest the answer will be, "Better than on a Mac."
Somebody mentioned Asia as a potential reason behind shrinking Linux percentages on Steam. I still have this pipedream where either China gets serious about security from US government hacking or Microsoft makes a big push to stop Windows being pirated in Asia. In either case, we'd see some sudden, massive Linux adoption spikes.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 3 June 2017 at 11:46 pm UTC
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI still have this pipedream where either China gets serious about security from US government hacking or Microsoft makes a big push to stop Windows being pirated in Asia. In either case, we'd see some sudden, massive Linux adoption spikes.that is why microsoft will never fight piracy, it makes more sense to then to have their product pirated than to have an competition for it.
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Quoting: GuestWhy do you assume that I didn't take this into account?because this is a common mistake, and this "So why is only 1% using Linux?" shows that you are not taking the things from the point of view of an windows users.
why would anyone want to be limited to an subset of the games he own/want if he can have then all with an better performance, less bugs and less headache to install then?
Quoting: GuestIf they have intersection then they are counted only one time in one category.
I said that you will easily find 2500 games with platinum compatibility in Wine and I was talking about games that don't have any kind of native port in Linux of course.
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?bIsQueue=false&bIsRejected=false&sClass=application&sTitle=Browse+Applications&iItemsPerPage=25&iPage=1&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true
2595 games, counting intersections.
i did that before a couple of times so i had an idea of the numbers.
Quoting: GuestIt's also obvious that you din't think about the fact that less than 40% of the Windows games is listed in the WineHQ database.
And yes, a significant percentage of these not-listed games also have platinum compatibility in Wine and don't have native ports.
So the real number can be above 3000 games without native ports and with platinum compatibility.
can be is not is, i dont like being a beta tester and i'm pretty sure most of people dont wan't it either.
they just want sit and play and not having their experience destroyed by an glith at its best moment.
just imagine you were watching your favorite movie, then an random image glitch comes in and spoil the experience, would you chose that videoplayer again when you can use something else and be sure that the movie will run flawless?
if it where windows being the Problematic OS and linux being the flawless, i'm pretty sure you wouldnt be deffending windows.
Quoting: GuestWindows vs Linux benchmarks in "the most popular online game ever": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM8qXbJqMvs
that was not for me, but i will reply anyway.
Dota2 is the most popular online game evar? are you fucking kidding me?
dota 1 was quite popular, but it was an custom map for warcraft, you need warcraft to play dota1, so the popularity of dota1 never had surpassed the popularity of warcraft.
dota2 may be more or less popular than dota1, but its not even close of league of legends.
dota2 cant even run on my computer natively, and i can run league of legends using wine (i could even on my previous machine) being able to run in an weak computer is very important for an online game, but even ignoring this, no, dota where never was as popular as LOL is.
also, not everyone looks for benchmarks of windows vs linux all the time, only a few linux users do so, and if you see other benchmarks you will see different results on other games (due to being bad ports).
Quoting: GuestYesterday a friend came and we played Left 4 Dead 2 (I was on Linux, he on Windows) He suddenly got stuck somewhere, he couldn't move in any direction. I had 0 issues on Linux and I had to finish the level for him before he could play again.
you logged out on his account?
because there are countless of un catched bugs on different games, that dont means one operating system is better than another.
there are bugs that are quite rare to occur, otherwise they would have being fixed already, valve is quite infamous for fixing bugs that affect almost no one and almost never.
i dont think they left less bugs open on the linux version of l4d2 than in the windows version, especialy considering i cant even play it at a good frame rate at this computer, and i could at an weaker one.
if they didnt fix the performance issues, why the hell did you think they fixed more bugs?
Last edited by elmapul on 4 June 2017 at 9:57 pm UTC
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Quoting: GuestAnd Linux (e.g. Debian) is also a more stable system than Windows 10.Probably not when it comes to issues relating to games, to be honest. Linux graphics stuff is under fairly heavy development these days (Wayland and such, drivers) and Linux sound seems to be complicated, finicky, and a source of frustration for many. Now on the plus side, I think by the time the graphics side has settled down it's gonna be pretty good, but for now . . .
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