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PayPalWell 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.
Quoting: EikeYes PXE, most of big cyber cafe (50++ PCs) use this system. Easy to maintain. But, if BSOD..... :'( Good luck to employees. :DQuoting: 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
FYI: Some of my friends worked/working in cyber cafe. That's why I know some 'stories'.
Quoting: tonRFYI: Some of my friends worked/working in cyber cafe. That's why I know some 'stories'.
Thanks for sharing, and for being our East Asia correspondent in general. :)
Arehandoro May 4, 2018
Quoting: Cyba.CowboyMeanwhile, it's now been a couple of years since any of the Linux-based computers in our household have been counted in the Hardware Survey... But that's not a bug, and it all works "as designed".
I actually got the survey two days ago and got totally by surprise!
Quoting: lucifertdarkQuoting: 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.
Here is my experience on the matter:
First of all Steam on Linux and Steam on Windows are completely different things. They are built specifically for each platform. When you do a default Steam install on Windows (7,8,10) it adds the Steam client to the auto-start applications, which you can modify using the MSConfig tool. I have personally installed Steam client on more than 10 Windows machines (7,8,10) and this is the behaviour I have observed.
Then, I have also installed Steam on multiple versions of Linux - Debian 7,8,9,10 + Ubuntu 16,17 + Mint - mostly using Gnome3 desktop, but also XFCE desktop and others. Approx 10 separate Steam client installs, and in each case the Steam client does not auto-start based on Default settings. I am not sure the case with KDE desktop and every other version of Linux out there.
Interesting. Then soon(tm) I should get another survey (while I got 3 on windows in the past year, so something certainly is not working there...)
Thanks for reporting!
QuoteIt's also interesting to note, that according to what Valve said, you're only supposed to be counted once a year,If I got it at all, it was when using cedega.
I really have no clue how the survey is supposed to look, or if it just silently submits data.
I do find the "survey taken" dates in my files, but it never ever asked me for permission to send survey data. So I guess it is genuinly meant to run, except that it doesn't.
Quoting: ArdjeI really have no clue how the survey is supposed to look, or if it just silently submits data.
I do find the "survey taken" dates in my files, but it never ever asked me for permission to send survey data. So I guess it is genuinly meant to run, except that it doesn't.
You're asked if you want to take the survey and at least one question for what the software can't find out (network speed?). Once a year might about match with my experience.
It would only be correct if the total number of windows installations would have declined again.
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