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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.
Tags: Editorial, Steam
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Xpander Jan 7, 2018
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.

Well its hard to find developers who are willing to move to new location, i remember ARK devs had (maybe still have this issue) problems finding good engine developers who know the code. These days there are so many game engines where you don't need to know much about coding to make a game, but when it gets big and needs special optimizations you need someone with more skills to optimize it.
Leopard Jan 7, 2018
Quoting: TheRiddickDoes PUBG work through wine?

Nope. BattleEye is not working with Wine.
Leopard Jan 7, 2018
Quoting: Ehvis
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

He is not considering Linux as a platform i guess. Next targets for them would be PS4 and Switch.

I don't think they would port it to MacOS either because they can't provide performance with it.
niarbeht Jan 7, 2018
Quoting: Ehvis
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

inb4 "Inconceivable!"

and

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Guest Jan 7, 2018
imagine what Valve could do if they used some of that money to really give SteamOS a push.
Maybe Steam will release SteamOS 2 when VR is more mature on Linux. That would be called SteamOSVR or VROS .. or because it's gen one VR... Steam 'V1R0S' :P
Guest Jan 7, 2018
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

In theory given recent developments wouldn't it be possible to hire a few people to test & bundle up dozens if not hundreds of DX9/DX10 games in a Wine flatpack ? where all the dependencies are met and working without any extra configuration required. Just download and run as a normal steam application through the client.
There shouldn't be any licensing problems with that either and there technically still windows applications sold through steam just for Linux. Im surprised GOG hasn't done this yet or at least played with the idea.

Quote... They must be spending a fair bit on blow and hookers or something... a common developer success trap.

From what i have seen of their offices it would more likely be Sweets and energy drinks.


Last edited by on 7 January 2018 at 2:13 pm UTC
niarbeht Jan 7, 2018
[quote=meggerman]
Quoting: TheRiddick
Quote... They must be spending a fair bit on blow and hookers or something... a common developer success trap.

From what i have seen of their offices it would more likely be Sweets and energy drinks.

Eh, same thing.
rea987 Jan 7, 2018
Chinese PUBG bots strikes back...
Code Artisan Jan 7, 2018
Quoting: TheRiddickThere is a linux compatible battleeye service used with ARMA3 now. Perhaps some file swapping will work, but likely version mismatch.

BattleEye does support GNU+Linux since early 2016. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/battleye-anticheat-now-supports-linux-already-live-in-ark-survival-evolved.6637
Asu Jan 7, 2018
if PUBG shits on us linux gamers then I hope we get that rumored CS mod.
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