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.
Valve is not pushing SteomOS like it used to; maybe they abandoned SteamOS idea?
What it means is, game publishers have no incentive to make Linux ports anymore.
I suspect bribery.
maybe that has something to do with it for other people too.. I don't know, maybe gamers more are familiar in Windows environment, it usually comes with computer preinstalled, and if you are mostly just gaming, why would you bother to install Linux? I mean, you just launch Steam, and choose game and go.. it's same on both platforms.
.b
Luke_Nukem Oct 3, 2017
I hardly ever use Steam anymore, GOG is where I spend my $$ these days.
Duke Takeshi Oct 3, 2017
What I also always wonder is why the game devs themselves don't like to play their own games on linux. The proportion of linux users in programming is much higher than for the average user. So why don't the people who actually program the game say 'hey, I'm using linux anyway to program this engine, why not making it possible to run it on this machine?'.
Most likely due to Steam getting momentum in the Chinese market - which is afaik mostly Windows.
That would also explain the totally weird growth in Windows 7!
My conclusion: even with a disconnected system like the gpd win it managed to fuck up the steam settings on my steam machine (I lost every steam controller setting that I did not export).
To install gta IV I had to jump through more hoops than wine on linux.
To install gta SA I even had to jump through even more hoops.
Then this constant nagging of that I have to activate it, and when I try that it says I need to buy a license...
I forgot what an easy life it is, living in a GNU world.
I do feel sorry that I even considered trying steam. But fortunately I did not get to participate in the steam hardware survey. If it did I would be rather sour, as I have not participated ever since I started using steam native on linux.
Anyway: off with that crap. I can't believe windows can actually be functional to some people.
Since then I've got exactly one Survey.
Valves Surveys are just wrong.
Sry Google translated :P
Last edited by andy155 on 3 October 2017 at 9:29 am UTC
Kuduzkehpan Oct 3, 2017
İ have windows 7 only on my pc atm. There arent any old good days left. Many windows games ruined it self win10 and dx12 are just bullshitting gaming industury. Old windows has security stability issues. They need to work on porting games to linux İf valve and corps alike want linux as a gamig platform. We have cryengine eu4 unity unigine 4A vulkan qt openal opengl sdl and much more everything to strike back and conquer desktop world. Valve and alike plz start porting games. Unite other porting companies in the name of linux love. This is what we need. Then all will fall apart and will make our rise shining much more. Lets prepare for the mighty holy battle unite revolutionaries of linux its time to bring battle to them.
Last edited by Kuduzkehpan on 3 October 2017 at 9:22 am UTC
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoA Linux exclusive AAA game with super amazing graphics and gameplay is the only thing that can revert this trend...
You see.. Most PC gamers install an illegal windows distro just for to play (legally or illegally) the game of the moment..
If there is an Ultra AAA game and is Linux exclusive, they will come to Linux just for to play this game.
Not even that will revert this unless folks can buy some branded Steam Machine that is available in their area for a reasonable price. Maybe a very minor portion will dual-boot but the majority will simply not bother.
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