Every month Valve put out their hardware survey, inside it shows off the market-share of operating systems and Linux has continued to decline.
For September 2017, Linux was at 0.60%. This is far from where Linux market-share on Steam was some time ago, although it has never been all that high anyway.
Here's a chart provided to me by EndeavourAccuracy (thanks!), which shows the unfortunate trend:
There could be many reasons for this, all of which I've probably mentioned before at some point. The one thing I would like to stress though, is that market-share declining doesn't necessarily mean less people. The amount of people using Linux for gaming on Steam, might actually be increasing, just not as quickly as Windows so it gets swallowed up. We know for a fact Steam is constantly growing and perhaps in markets where Linux isn't popular pushing the Linux share down. However, the opposite could obviously be true too.
I don't claim to have any answers on it. All we can do is speculate, since we know nothing about how Valve actually pick the systems that get selected for a survey. We know nothing about the numbers behind the percentages, or well, anything really.
We do need to take into account people who dual-boot, which isn't going to be a small number. Even our own limited survey shows about 31.78% of people also use Windows.
Obviously it's not good to see this trend, but as long as Linux games sell enough for a developer to be happy, that's the main point. Going by the last time I spoke to multiple developers about sales of their Linux games, most games mentioned in that article were selling well above the current percentage of Linux gamers as tracked by Steam.
I highly doubt Feral Interactive would also be announcing another Linux port, if the real amount of Linux gamers was declining either, since the types of titles they port would likely need a lot of sales to be worth it, yet they have two new titles currently being teased for Linux.
What are your thoughts on this?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
ShoNuff!!! Oct 3, 2017
Quoting: orochi_kyoLinux problem is easy to guess, too MANY DISTROS, most of them doesnt receive updates or has broken drivers.
So.. about the drivers: I wanted to agree with what you wrote but I think the issues is most of the recent linux software is packaged as rpm or .deb --> Back in the day ;-) source package compile was always an option (for the most part). Sure you can use alien or whatever to make it more user friendly to install a package for other distros that aren't Red Hat or Ubuntu... but that is way too much effort for a newbie or someone fed up of a decade of this non-sense.
Example, I have a Vega 64 gpu that I can not use in my Arch build (no working driver from package manager)... and going to the manufacturer site there is no source file to compile. Sure, I can expertly build a kernel and get it working but for gods sake... it is frustrating/tiring that in 2017 (soon to be 2018) for simple things not to work and have to go thru that level of effort only because rpm and deb packages are the only choice.
Last edited by ShoNuff!!! on 3 October 2017 at 4:37 am UTC
cRaZy-bisCuiT Oct 3, 2017
The only thing I hope is that there'll be enough players in the future to justify Linux game development.
Even if there wouldn't I won't skip back to Windows, instead just sticking with what I got and play less since I don't have time anyways.
But as long as (good) indie titlesbabd (Feral) AAA titles are floating in I don't see your problem.
ShoNuff!!! Oct 3, 2017
Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiTI really don't get what your guys problem is. Actually I'm playing games on Linux because it's my main and almost only system I do use and love. I don't care about any numbers as long as I got good games
That's all fine... if you are ok what with you have but most hardcore gamers want the best new games available (not diminishing anyone that chooses to go no tux no bucks (because I was that guy up till 2 weeks ago)... but most want the AAA stuff... not just the good indie games. Saying I am ok with what I have as a linux gamer is not accounting/acknowledging the collective majority of other people... I would wager most want the games most played (especially those of us that enjoy online multiplayer).
Last edited by ShoNuff!!! on 3 October 2017 at 4:37 am UTC
Quoting: Xpanderi upgrade the nvidia driver all the time when latest version comes out, yet i have only been getting a survey prompt 3 times during all those years steam on linux.
heck i have gotten more surveys when i launched steam in wine and that happens super rarely
Exactly the same here.
lucifertdark Oct 3, 2017
I don't care if there is some fancy new game that people rage about, I only care that I have good games to play every now and then, which I have ample of on Linux.
Heck, I'm gaming on a 5.5 year old laptop with AMD graphics, and strangely all the games I try work fine on it.
Quoting: PhlebiacQuoting: Xpanderi upgrade the nvidia driver all the time when latest version comes out, yet i have only been getting a survey prompt 3 times during all those years steam on linux.
heck i have gotten more surveys when i launched steam in wine and that happens super rarely
Exactly the same here.
IDK I updated and downgraded the Nvidia driver to about 9 different versions trying to fix a problem with Torchlight 2 and half way through doing that my computer got a survey (it was the middle of the month and I had launched steam plenty of times before). Naturally though, I've gotten probably about 3 surveys on Linux in 2 years across 3 computers which is 0.5 surveys per computer-year, but I've definitely been luckier than the average Linux user.
Quoting: GuestI have been using Steam in Linux ever since it was available, and I've never filled out a survey, nor seen one for that matter. I can't be the only person this is happening to, so I have to question how many Linux users there really are. I would guess double to triple what the reports are saying, or maybe even more.
Funny thing, I got a survey prompt while booted into Win7. There was only two options: submit now, or not participate.
Thanks, Valve, for helping me be represented correctly.
Quoting: gurv- Valve does not seem to push Linux recently but to be fair they kinda have to wait for their previous efforts (Vulkan, help with AMD drivers, SDL, etc.) to bear fruits before making another push. Just think that Unity only offered Vulkan as a stable backend very recently. And no game has yet activated it and no other game engine has stable support. These things unfortunately take time.
Oh, if you've been paying attention to the SteamVR update news you'd know they are ABSOLUTELY building up to something. SteamVR Home (crossplatform) and Linux are getting the bulk of their VR software team's attention.
Last edited by roothorick on 3 October 2017 at 5:54 am UTC
legluondunet Oct 3, 2017
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