As it turns out, the Linux market share reported in the hardware survey for September was higher than initially reported.
Writing on Twitter, Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais said this:
Just fixed a small rounding error in the HW survey that was affecting reported Linux usage. Distributions with less than a handful of users weren't getting factored into the total percentage. Numbers for September have just been updated: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
With those fresh numbers, this means the Linux share for September was actually 0.78% not 0.71%. The recent figures now also show Windows dropping down to 96.29%. While that's a relatively small addition, it's still good to have it be more accurate.
I've updated our dedicated page tracking it, which shows that Linux is now hitting a 16 month high in terms of Steam market share. I don't think the relevance of that can be overstated, considering another 0.15% would put us back to a level we were at in September of 2016. Although, we would have a lot more users considering the ever-increasing growth of Steam.
One thing to be clear on though, is that we have no idea how long this error has been around. Meaning it could have affected months or years worth of data.
This isn't the first time there's been a flaw in the survey, like the time Valve was essentially over-counting cyber cafe customers.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: YoRHa-2BQuoting: LinasWith these rates we will have total world domination in no time. ;)Imagine, in a year we'll be at 16.8%, and in two years we'll have a market share of over 470%!
Or maybe my math is a little off, that's a possibility too.
https://www.xkcd.com/605/
Nice avatar, by the way. Haven't you changed it, like two times in a couple days?
Quoting: DuncYeah, well, but I have Steam's language set to English (easier for bug reports and co), so it might be a little biased.QuoteI've updated our dedicated page tracking itWow. I hadn't realised how much of a difference this revision made until I saw that. Truch be told, last month's “old” increase wasn't really all that much bigger than August's, although that was a pretty big jump too. But this really stretches it out.
What I don't think has been mentioned here, although it's clear from the chart, is that among English speakers the uptick over the last two months has been huge, almost doubling the Linux share. We're now comfortably over 2% in that (pretty large and important*) demographic. I don't know what the actual figures are these days, but that's getting close to what I think of as “Mac territory”.
*Apologies to speakers of other languages, but it's true.
What I would like to see is Valve improving these surveys. But maybe the statistical significance of Linux users isn't good enough?
Network speed, more filesystems, break down distros a bit more (maybe Ubuntu 18.04, ubuntu-based, Arch-based, etc). Filesystem. Kernel version. Proprietary driver vs OSS, mesa version, AMD vs nVidia vs Intel. Wayland Vs X.
You know, stats that could help the developers make choices, and that we could point at when wondering about the Linux Gaming landscape (other than this awesome site, of course).
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Quoting: ShabbyXDidn't they reveal that os share is calculated automatically and is independent of the surveys?Maybe, but not that I remember hearing. Source?
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 October 2018 at 7:02 pm UTC
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Quoting: MayeulCYeah, well, but I have Steam's language set to English (easier for bug reports and co), so it might be a little biased.That kind of proves my point, actually. I didn't mean to suggest that we native speakers are more important than everyone else, but really just that: “Steam clients set to English” are a very big market.
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Quoting: YoRHa-2BQuoting: LinasWith these rates we will have total world domination in no time. ;)Imagine, in a year we'll be at 16.8%, and in two years we'll have a market share of over 470%!
Or maybe my math is a little off, that's a possibility too.
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Quoting: GuestQuoting: Purple Library GuyI mean, if all those ex-PUBG players just washed right back out again as they stopped playing PUBG, most of them presumably never bought another game.
Why do you think that ? What does make the PUBG players so special ? I have no idea and do not know much about PUBG. :)
To make things very clear, i am talking about their alleged characteristic of non-other-game buyers only.
PUBG was a fad which attracted a lot of people including folks that might not normally be gaming much (read: not spending much money on games).
Last edited by Brisse on 5 October 2018 at 12:11 pm UTC
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Quoting: GuestApparently a whole lot of the influx of new Chinese users to Steam was people who came to play PUBG, which was a huge fad. Theoretically, they might have bought other games on Steam once they had arrived, but if they did that presumably they would have stayed on Steam to play those other games after they were finished playing PUBG. But Liam said,Quoting: Purple Library GuyI mean, if all those ex-PUBG players just washed right back out again as they stopped playing PUBG, most of them presumably never bought another game.
Why do you think that ? What does make the PUBG players so special ? I have no idea and do not know much about PUBG. :)
QuoteI think one of the big reasons is also the major decline in people playing PUBG. Look at the "Players every day" graph on SteamDB and see how far it has fallen, which is big considering it was a game previously pushing the "simplified chinese" use up high. 3.2 million in January to around 1 million now.So it seems a whole lot of the people who came to play PUBG in fact left again once they were finished playing it (and since they were all Windows users, Linux share rose as a result). But if they left Steam once they were finished playing PUBG, that means they didn't buy other games and stick around to play them. QED.
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Quoting: DuncQuoting: MayeulCYeah, well, but I have Steam's language set to English (easier for bug reports and co), so it might be a little biased.That kind of proves my point, actually. I didn't mean to suggest that we native speakers are more important than everyone else, but really just that: “Steam clients set to English” are a very big market.
If Linux users tend to set their language to English (and Windows users way less so), it actually makes the English-only statistics unrepresentative.
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Is there a reason Linux users would be more likely than Windows users to use Steam in English rather than their own language?
Last edited by Salvatos on 5 October 2018 at 6:51 pm UTC
Last edited by Salvatos on 5 October 2018 at 6:51 pm UTC
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: ShabbyXDidn't they reveal that os share is calculated automatically and is independent of the surveys?Maybe, but not that I remember hearing. Source?
I can't seem to find the gol article quoting someone about this. @liam, do you remember this?
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Quoting: ShabbyXJust to clarify, I don't find it hard to believe. I've seen plenty of plausible speculation that Valve must have the accurate data somewhere, which they could release instead of the survey info, but I don't remember anything about them actually doing it.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: ShabbyXDidn't they reveal that os share is calculated automatically and is independent of the surveys?Maybe, but not that I remember hearing. Source?
I can't seem to find the gol article quoting someone about this. @liam, do you remember this?
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