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Recently, Valve did a presentation about Steam during Indigo 2017 which took place in June. The interesting and not surprising thing here is that Steam just keeps on growing.
I knew Steam would be growing, but I didn't think it would be growing that quickly. By the looks of it, since 2015 they're about 2.4 million away from doubling the concurrent users record. It might sound like a lot, but they've already gone from 8.4 to 14 million.
I believe that the decline of Linux in the Steam survey is partly due to the rise of Steam in other markets, where Linux just isn't really popular. According to one of their slides, sales in Asia accounted for 17% total Steam sales for 2017 so far, that's pretty huge, when you consider say Western Europe is only 29% so far this year. From what I remember, Asia has been growing as a market for Steam for the past few years and quite quickly by the looks of it.
When looking at those sorts of percentages, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that growth in markets where Windows is more prevalent will shrink the Linux market share.
They do confirm that a UI update is coming as well, which will update a lot of ways you interact with Steam. This will affect curators, developers and normal users, like this slide gives you an idea of:
You can check out this post with many more slide pictures.
It's also interesting to see this page that Steam has, showing the number of support requests sent them in the last 24 hours. Over 200K of them were for refunds, wow! Surprising to see the technical support requests being so low as well at under 4K. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I knew Steam would be growing, but I didn't think it would be growing that quickly. By the looks of it, since 2015 they're about 2.4 million away from doubling the concurrent users record. It might sound like a lot, but they've already gone from 8.4 to 14 million.
I believe that the decline of Linux in the Steam survey is partly due to the rise of Steam in other markets, where Linux just isn't really popular. According to one of their slides, sales in Asia accounted for 17% total Steam sales for 2017 so far, that's pretty huge, when you consider say Western Europe is only 29% so far this year. From what I remember, Asia has been growing as a market for Steam for the past few years and quite quickly by the looks of it.
When looking at those sorts of percentages, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that growth in markets where Windows is more prevalent will shrink the Linux market share.
They do confirm that a UI update is coming as well, which will update a lot of ways you interact with Steam. This will affect curators, developers and normal users, like this slide gives you an idea of:
You can check out this post with many more slide pictures.
It's also interesting to see this page that Steam has, showing the number of support requests sent them in the last 24 hours. Over 200K of them were for refunds, wow! Surprising to see the technical support requests being so low as well at under 4K. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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qptain Nemo 5 Jul 2017
I hope they finally add the ability for a curator to edit the blurb of their recommendation, stupid to not have an edit function.You can. You have to go to your group, the curator tab, then click on the recommendation there and then you'll have an option to edit it. And yeah, it's not the simplest most obvious way.
0 Likes
Yes, Asia is becoming huge for Steam. [The developer of Defender's Quest tweeted about their worldwide sales during the Steam sale](https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/882442728201744384). China is close behind the US in revenue and higher in total number of units sold.
2 Likes, Who?
Bah! Removed that line, but yeah that's not very convenient I completely overlooked that, as I was on the "store" styled page for it. Quite a nuisance.I hope they finally add the ability for a curator to edit the blurb of their recommendation, stupid to not have an edit function.You can. You have to go to your group, the curator tab, then click on the recommendation there and then you'll have an option to edit it. And yeah, it's not the simplest most obvious way.
0 Likes
That looks pointless to me actually. I don't care about how Steam and it's Windows user base grows.
Valve should encourage Linux usage on Asia , that is the only way i can be happy about this kind of news.
Valve should encourage Linux usage on Asia , that is the only way i can be happy about this kind of news.
1 Likes, Who?
Any idea of what the new UI code is written in ? If it is QT that would be pretty sweet.
1 Likes, Who?
Metallinatus 5 Jul 2017
The fact that Linux can keep itself around the 1% mark all the time despite all the growing going on at Steam shows that the number of people on Linux there is growing more or less in the same pace. Remember when we were ≃1% of 10 million? Well, now we are ≃1% of 14 million! But still "the market is too small", amirite....?
19 Likes, Who?
The fact that Linux can keep itself around the 1% mark all the time despite all the growing going on at Steam shows that the number of people on Linux there is growing more or less in the same pace. Remember when we were ≃1% of 10 million? Well, now we are ≃1% of 14 million! But still "the market is too small", amirite....?Very much this.
1 Likes, Who?
That looks pointless to me actually. I don't care about how Steam and it's Windows user base grows.
Valve should encourage Linux usage on Asia , that is the only way i can be happy about this kind of news.
We get the percentage of Linux users monthly. Would be nice to have the gross number to estimate the Linux number an its development.
0 Likes
The fact that Linux can keep itself around the 1% mark all the time despite all the growing going on at Steam shows that the number of people on Linux there is growing more or less in the same pace. Remember when we were ≃1% of 10 million? Well, now we are ≃1% of 14 million! But still "the market is too small", amirite....?
The market will always be too small for lazy ass developers :P It's just lucky that we have Feral who prove that porting games to such platforms actually makes them money.
Also the companies that sell linux devices have exploded in popularity recently.
3 Likes, Who?
Any idea of what the new UI code is written in ? If it is QT that would be pretty sweet.Unlikely. They have their own GUI toolkit and that's not likely to change. They wrote about it [in this thread](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1040#issuecomment-150274129) (partially on topic).
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A message to the devs that think that the market share it's small Kevin Costner has something to say "if you build it they will come"
2 Likes, Who?
Bah! Removed that line, but yeah that's not very convenient I completely overlooked that, as I was on the "store" styled page for it. Quite a nuisance.I hope they finally add the ability for a curator to edit the blurb of their recommendation, stupid to not have an edit function.You can. You have to go to your group, the curator tab, then click on the recommendation there and then you'll have an option to edit it. And yeah, it's not the simplest most obvious way.
Isn't China a huge market for Linux as well though? IIRC they had their own distro that's pretty popular in that country.
1 Likes, Who?
That looks pointless to me actually. I don't care about how Steam and it's Windows user base grows.
Valve should encourage Linux usage on Asia , that is the only way i can be happy about this kind of news.
People in certain parts of asia mainly china just do not pay for software thats why Windows is completely free out there in stripped out form and game prices on steam are upto 70 percent cheaper just so games developers might see some money. Unless its an MMo featuring school girls or Angels they seem to do very well in Korea and Japan.
1 Likes, Who?
Bah! Removed that line, but yeah that's not very convenient I completely overlooked that, as I was on the "store" styled page for it. Quite a nuisance.I hope they finally add the ability for a curator to edit the blurb of their recommendation, stupid to not have an edit function.You can. You have to go to your group, the curator tab, then click on the recommendation there and then you'll have an option to edit it. And yeah, it's not the simplest most obvious way.
Isn't China a huge market for Linux as well though? IIRC they had their own distro that's pretty popular in that country.
AFAIK majority of chinese users use Windows (they even have the special edition of Win10 that doesn't include spyware... what a privillage!)
1 Likes, Who?
Duke Takeshi 5 Jul 2017
Oceania beats latin america in sales oO
2 Likes, Who?
Gaming is growing in general. For example GOG added Chinese section to their forums recently. And they show users growth every year as well.
See https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2017/05/cd-projekt-group-results-in-1q-2017-1.pdf
Last edited by Shmerl on 5 Jul 2017 at 5:48 pm UTC
See https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2017/05/cd-projekt-group-results-in-1q-2017-1.pdf
Last edited by Shmerl on 5 Jul 2017 at 5:48 pm UTC
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Oceania beats latin america in sales oO
Considering how much companies overcharge prices in that region it is not that surprising at all.
Last edited by Mal on 6 Jul 2017 at 8:56 am UTC
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I wonder – what Western Europe means there? Is it European Union? Is it geographic Western Europe (west of Germany)? Is it everything west of Russian territories (= European part of Russia?)? Does it include Central European part of the Union, does it include Belarus and Ukraine?
6 Likes, Who?
A message to the devs that think that the market share it's small Kevin Costner has something to say "if you build it they will come"
While that quote feels alright, it seems like a lot of us forget how publishers/devs have little to no incentive to aid linux gaming market share rise.
Aside from preventing a complete platform/store lockdown (ie windows store), which only affects publishers and stores, and making their customers happy, which is a whole other topic, there's no good reason why the majority of devs/publishers would care to make more people switch to linux for their gaming needs.
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Could be interesting if valve released distribution of OS usage per country or continent. That could show whether such conclusions as "Asia uses windows, so there" is actually true. It's true that piracy makes eastern countries use proprietary software more "easily", but I have seen first hand (I'm from Iran) that there are also Linux advocates as much as there are here in the west (in Canada now).
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