Steam continues to get bigger with another milestone being reached! Yesterday Steam shot passed 18 million concurrent users online.
The exact number was 18,528,722 according to the official Steam stats page, which was hit around 3PM UTC. Around that time, over 7 million people were actually in-game as well—nuts!
If we think about how many Linux gamers that could be, it might be around 79,673 Linux gamers online if we use the current Linux market share on Steam as reported from December at 0.43%. Likely highly inaccurate, but it's fun to think about.
It was only in November of last year when it hit 17.6 million, so that's some rather quick growth. Less than two months to pull in that many more people is just insane, although it does seem like it's fuelled by PUBG which hit another all-time peak itself in the last day. It will be interesting to see what happens when the mass-hype around PUBG fades.
As of right now, from Valve's top 10 games having the most players online eight of them support Linux, which is pretty damn good. The list fluctuates of course and it would be better if PUBG supported Linux, but sadly that feels like a dream right now. Even without PUBG, there's plenty to look forward to this year for Linux gaming.
Thanks for the tip Joe!
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
GustyGhost Jan 7, 2018
TheRiddick Jan 7, 2018
Quoting: TheRiddickDoes PUBG work through wine?
PUBG barely works on Windows and Xbox One. I think WINE is a distant dream, :p
TheRiddick Jan 7, 2018
Last edited by TheRiddick on 7 January 2018 at 6:07 am UTC
Quoting: TheRiddickFor a company making crazy amounts of money, you'd think they could hire a army of programmers and problem solvers at least short term to sort out the performance issues and porting it to Linux... They must be spending a fair bit on blow and hookers or something... a common developer success trap.
But there are more people on Windows than Linux. People buying it on Windows is something they can count on. I don't see them counting on tens of thousands of Linux purchases when they'll make more from Windows/XB1.
ElectricPrism Jan 7, 2018
Quoting: TheRiddickDoes PUBG work through wine?
I just had a look at it. It looks like it needs a "BattleEye" service (some kind of anti cheat? Didn't bother researching), which is implemented in windows trough a kernel driver, to access process memory freely. I highly doubt support for this will ever be implemented in wine. Your best guess is probably ReactOS ^_^
Even so, this whole anti-cheat thing... is a big security hole. I mean, giving unrestricted access to your kernel, and userspace processes to a third-party (with closed source software)? It gives me shudders...
Some workarounds seems to have been implemented (or at least tried) in other games, but the issue here is that BE is trying to access other processes'memory trough this driver, and this can't be properly done in userspace if the memory isn't clearly defined as shared memory. I could imagine a workaround with virtualization, but don't hold your breath.
Last edited by MayeulC on 7 January 2018 at 7:08 am UTC
TheRiddick Jan 7, 2018
QuoteThe list fluctuates of course and it would be better if PUBG supported Linux, but sadly that feels like a dream right now.
Wasn't it the ceo who said they want to bring pubg to every platform conceivable? I'm pretty sure he did not have Linux in mind, but you could try to hold them to that. :D
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