Well this sure is interesting, Valve have announced some flaws in their Steam Hardware Survey that caused cyber cafes to over-count users.
Here's what Valve said in full:
The latest Steam Hardware Survey incorporates a number of fixes that address over counting of cyber cafe customers that occurred during the prior seven months.
Historically, the survey used a client-side method to ensure that systems were counted only once per year, in order to provide an accurate picture of the entire Steam user population. It turns out, however, that many cyber cafes manage their hardware in a way that was causing their customers to be over counted.
Around August 2017, we started seeing larger-than-usual movement in certain stats, notably an increase in Windows 7 usage, an increase in quad-core CPU usage, as well as changes in CPU and GPU market share. This period also saw a large increase in the use of Simplified Chinese. All of these coincided with an increase in Steam usage in cyber cafes in Asia, whose customers were being over counted in the survey.
It took us some time to root-cause the problem and deploy a fix, but we are confident that, as of April 2018, the Steam Hardware Survey is no longer over counting users.
It's good to see Valve be open about this and get it fixed, as many people suspected issues for a while now and it's interesting to see some validation of certain theories about cyber cafe use. The funny thing is, someone mentioned this to me on reddit today and I didn't actually think it would have been such a big issue, so it's fun to be wrong.
It's also interesting to note, that according to what Valve said, you're only supposed to be counted once a year, although many of us have seen an issue where it will come up many times within Windows or while using Steam with Wine and rarely on the native Linux client. For all we know, this could have been part of the issue that's now solved.
We will be tracking it on our dedicated page. It certainly will be interesting to see what happens in future. What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
johndoe86x May 4, 2018
So, I don't think it was Deep Freeze or formatting, it was dozens of users logging into the same machine with different Steam accounts on a daily basis.
no_information_here May 4, 2018
If you don't release your methodology, your stats are junk.
LinuxGamesTV May 4, 2018
Quoting: g000hI've suspected inaccuracies in the Steam counts, for a long time. One other Windows versus other OS thing that I've noticed is the fact that Steam auto-starts on Windows when you log on to Windows. With my Linux desktops, Steam only logs on, when I launch the client myself. ...
That's not true. On KDE you have an Autostart, too. So when you log on to KDE Steam auto-starts.
LinuxGamesTV May 4, 2018
Quoting: chancho_zombieQuoting: g000hI've suspected inaccuracies in the Steam counts, for a long time. One other Windows versus other OS thing that I've noticed is the fact that Steam auto-starts on Windows when you log on to Windows. With my Linux desktops, Steam only logs on, when I launch the client myself.
good point if all the windows users are auto-starting every boot the chance of getting a survey surely increases. It might even artificially increase windows online presence at steam.
Wrong. I have Steam on KDE in Autostart and get no Survey over Years now.
lucifertdark May 4, 2018
Quoting: g000hI've suspected inaccuracies in the Steam counts, for a long time. One other Windows versus other OS thing that I've noticed is the fact that Steam auto-starts on Windows when you log on to Windows. With my Linux desktops, Steam only logs on, when I launch the client myself.Steam works the exact same way in Windows as Linux, you decide whether you want it to start with the OS or not, mine starts when I say it starts not when Windows starts, never let anything auto-start with the OS, especially Windows as that's a surefire way to get your system infected.
ps. we've been telling Valve for years their survey was screwed, it's not tinfoil hats cutting off oxygen to our brains.
Last edited by lucifertdark on 4 May 2018 at 7:21 am UTC
Quoting: tonRSome CC using harddrive-less computer, boot via LAN. (I don't know how to explained it correctly)
It is correct. The technology is called PXE.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_booting
lucifertdark May 4, 2018
Quoting: chancho_zombiemaybe I don't understand this survey quite right. There is always something random in surveys, this is not a fact set in stone. Surveys take a small portion to amplify to the hole population. There is always something random in surveys if not it should be called census.If only it WAS random, I've had the survey pop up in Windows 4 times already this year & not a single time in Linux, the entire time I've used Steam in Linux I've had the survey twice in Linux & both of those times were last year.
It's not random, more like demented.
However , when i put Windows 10 i got survey after installing Steam.
Wine ; when i install Steam on Wine i got survey.
Something really skewed was going on survey. We told many times but answer was always the same.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/2286
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