Valve have put out another of their monthly Steam Hardware & Software Survey and it puts the Linux market share figure on Steam at 0.52%. In comparison the month before was at 0.57%.
I said before, I won't write about this every month, so I wanted to touch on it again today. To get this out the way first, as a reminder we're tracking the Linux share on Steam on a dedicated page right here. Obviously, it doesn't paint a very positive picture when you simply take the percentages at face value—which you simply shouldn't do.
However, this leads me onto an important point, Valve recently did a presentation where they showed quite a large amount of overall growth:
Nearly 4 million first-time users each month, actually buying something on Steam. Their figures always blow me away, it's just an insane amount of people we're talking about overall here. This seems to be a constant too, every time Valve talk about it, they've grown tremendously.
Considering the constant growth rate of Steam, especially in markets where the primary language is Chinese, it's not surprising the Linux overall share drops. Valve's own survey shows that for Linux users, Simplified Chinese as a language option only makes up 0.95%, so when you think about how Steam is growing and in markets where it seems Linux isn't popular, it will bring down our overall market share. This is shown pretty clearly on our dedicated page, where you can pretty easily see the correlation between the Linux share dropping as the overall share of Simplified Chinese across the whole of Steam rises.
Taking all that into account, while the Linux market share on Steam has dropped, we're always talking about a percentage based on an overall number that's constantly growing. I would imagine the overall number of Linux users has increased, but to know that for sure we would need Valve to be more forthcoming about their total active users more regularly.
There's still a lot of ways Linux gaming needs to improve of course. It seems pulling in users from Asia would probably help quite a lot, but for that we need the heavy-hitting titles they seem to love like PUBG. Virtual Reality is one of the big ones right now, which Valve have been investing in getting it to work well on Linux, so eventually that side of things should improve.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: GuestWell, whilst you need, lets say grade school level math to comprehend that the % going down can actually rep growth depending on the base that percentage applies to, there will still be articles popping up about the death of linux gaming. *shrugs*
You don't need articles. It's enough to have developers, who decide not to dedicate development time to serve 1 potential gamer, when they can spend that time to improve the game in a way that will benefit all other 199 potential gamers at the expense of that one.
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kellerkindt Jul 2, 2018
Am I the only one thinking a separate listing per country would be neat?
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Wouldn't that mean roughly 19,500 new Steam users on Linux per month? That's no small number.
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Quoting: aFoxNamedMorrisWouldn't that mean roughly 19,500 new Steam users on Linux per month? That's no small number.
Not necessarily. Back when Steam had about 125 million users, about 1% was on Linux. Now it must be going to about 200 million with 0.52% on Linux. Accounting for some statistical variation, that is about the same. Seems to me that Steam Linux users are fairly stable at just above a million.
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I am currently learning Chinese and yes, the Linux support for Chinese typing is simply much worse on it than on Windows.
That just makes it that much harder to gain any ground in China. Not really sure how that could change other than with some serious financial backing. Windows is such a standard in China, I don't think much ground is to be gained there, tbh.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 2 July 2018 at 9:14 am UTC
That just makes it that much harder to gain any ground in China. Not really sure how that could change other than with some serious financial backing. Windows is such a standard in China, I don't think much ground is to be gained there, tbh.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 2 July 2018 at 9:14 am UTC
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Quoting: Ehvis[...] Seems to me that Steam Linux users are fairly stable at just above a million.
Maybe but improbable. There are new Linux users every day registering on forums, asking stack questions and getting counted in the linuxcounter.net project. It would be weird of none of them were gamers. Even weirder if none of them had Steam account. I can agree as long as fairy stable means growing slowly but otherwise I just can't believe it.
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Quoting: cprnI can agree as long as fairy stable means growing slowly but otherwise I just can't believe it.
Could very well be possible. I don't think the data is accurate enough to clearly show something like 10% growth of Linux users over that period of time.
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> I would imagine the overall number of Linux users has increased
> I can agree as long as fairy stable means growing slowly but otherwise I just can't believe it.
Can you all just stop that bullshit? All the data suggests that there is no growth. This is nothing where your believes are somehow relevant. Linux gaming doesn't grow whereas other platforms do. That's bad news. Stop trying to spin it any other way.
> I can agree as long as fairy stable means growing slowly but otherwise I just can't believe it.
Can you all just stop that bullshit? All the data suggests that there is no growth. This is nothing where your believes are somehow relevant. Linux gaming doesn't grow whereas other platforms do. That's bad news. Stop trying to spin it any other way.
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As usual, I don't really have much faith in the Survey. As usual, I think that for game developer information what would be most useful is figures for just what percentage of $$$ get spent on Linux games, and I'm sure Valve have that somewhere in the guts of their system. It's fine to have ten gajillion new Chinese Steam users, but if they all only ever buy PUBG they're not too relevant to any developers who didn't develop PUBG.
Linux should, however, improve support for Chinese typing if it's bad. Fundamentally I think open source should be just as good for Asians as for everyone else; piracy only solves one problem with Windows. It would be nice to see them turning on to the advantages of Free Software.
Linux should, however, improve support for Chinese typing if it's bad. Fundamentally I think open source should be just as good for Asians as for everyone else; piracy only solves one problem with Windows. It would be nice to see them turning on to the advantages of Free Software.
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Quoting: muell> I would imagine the overall number of Linux users has increasedWe don't have the actual data we need to know if we've actually shrunk in terms of overall number or not, like I said in the article, if you cared to quote to relevant part:
> I can agree as long as fairy stable means growing slowly but otherwise I just can't believe it.
Can you all just stop that bullshit? All the data suggests that there is no growth. This is nothing where your believes are somehow relevant. Linux gaming doesn't grow whereas other platforms do. That's bad news. Stop trying to spin it any other way.
QuoteI would imagine the overall number of Linux users has increased, but to know that for sure we would need Valve to be more forthcoming about their total active users more regularly.I'm very clearly speculating, since we just don't know.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 2 July 2018 at 10:25 am UTC
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I am very sceptical about Steam's survey. It popped up 3 times on Windows and only 1 time on Linux (I am dual-booting). Does it mean I got counted 3 times as Windows user and only 1 time Linux user? Does games I play/buy and on which platform count? Or is it simply "randomly show survey" and then count me as a Windows user, even though I spent most of my time in Linux? Still confused about this Steam survey, from my POV it seems quite biased against Linux.
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Quoting: muell>[...] Can you all just stop that bullshit? All the data suggests that there is no growth. This is nothing where your believes are somehow relevant. Linux gaming doesn't grow whereas other platforms do. That's bad news. Stop trying to spin it any other way.
Where there's lack of data, believes are everything. Your bullshit against mine.
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Quoting: liamdaweWe don't have the actual data we need to know if we've actually shrunk in terms of overall number or not
You certainly know that that's not true. You even said in the article that Valve gives out good estimations of the overall growth and therefor absolute number of active users. If you do the math it clearly shows that the number of users stays constant. I know that you know that so the only question I have is why you never show that data and instead choose to mislead people.
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Quoting: muellAs I said on reddit, although given what you're saying, I imagine you're actually "swick" so you're probably reading it there anyway:Quoting: liamdaweWe don't have the actual data we need to know if we've actually shrunk in terms of overall number or not
You certainly know that that's not true. You even said in the article that Valve gives out good estimations of the overall growth and therefor absolute number of active users. If you do the math it clearly shows that the number of users stays constant. I know that you know that so the only question I have is why you never show that data and instead choose to mislead people.
Quoting: me on redditAny estimate would likely be well off, again, since Valve give updates on their growth rarely and when they do, it often only covers a few months. Each time they give a different level of growth as well. The estimation I put on our page, is also likely completely off the mark.
If you can seriously give an estimate, showing your exact workings out on how you came to the total active user accounts on Steam, then we can talk. I'm not going out of my way to be positive or negative, but I won't say something is x until it is shown it is x.
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Well, as per a discussion we got on Phoronix, there is a problem with Steam client on Linux. Many Linux users never had the Survey pop-up on Linux. Steam seems to capture the Survey based on IP so if a users answering the survey on Windows then open Linux the survey will not pop-up anymore. Make the test, open Steam on Linux(no survey). Install Steam on Windows and you will get the survey pop-up 100% of the time...The survey did not capture users using 2 OS as Windows prevent capturing Linux users that using 2 OS...
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slaapliedje Jul 2, 2018
I always refuse the survey when it pops up on Windows.
Last edited by slaapliedje on 2 July 2018 at 2:24 pm UTC
Last edited by slaapliedje on 2 July 2018 at 2:24 pm UTC
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since google is now "Platinum Member of The Linux Foundation", supports VULKAN and also planing a console do you think it is going to be a linux based console? like the steam machine?
google also wanna buy some game developers maybe for exclusive titles. thats what the steam machine doesnt have, but you need exclusive titles to get market share
google also wanna buy some game developers maybe for exclusive titles. thats what the steam machine doesnt have, but you need exclusive titles to get market share
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyLinux should, however, improve support for Chinese typing if it's bad. Fundamentally I think open source should be just as good for Asians as for everyone else; piracy only solves one problem with Windows. It would be nice to see them turning on to the advantages of Free Software.Unfortunately, these being community-based projects, you need skilled and knowledgeable people who care about that issue to work on it. The people who already work on Linux OSes but know nothing about Chinese can't do much about it themselves; and if Linux isn't already attractive for Asians, there's little incentive for Asians to work on developing it further. It's a vicious circle that would be hard to break without someone deciding to hire the right people to contribute open code to the projects. But between non-Asians and Asians who (hypothetically) have little reason to care about Linux, who will want to put that kind of money forward?
Quoting: mylkasince google is now "Platinum Member of The Linux Foundation", supports VULKAN and also planing a console do you think it is going to be a linux based console? like the steam machine?From what little I've seen about that, it looks like Google would approach that from a game streaming angle, so while I imagine the client computer could be Linux-based, the game-running servers would probably use Windows to have the most attractive library possible. So not very different from other such services that have popped up in the past couple years, but with a bigger name and more solid infrastructure behind it.
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Honestly and I know am going to get slated for it this is just one more nail in the coffin for me the lack of triple a gaming on linux this year aside from Tomb Raider reboot 2 means and i hate to say it i am going back to dual booting after six years on pure linux.
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Perhaps this will provide some more of info we're looking for?
https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/29/valves-steam-spy-replacement-game-stats/
https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/29/valves-steam-spy-replacement-game-stats/
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