Back in 2017, Valve rolled out a small change to the wishlist feature on Steam that quite a few people still don't know about.
We previously posted about this when the change happened but as always, things get lost and people forget. If you head to this page (click your username -> Preferences) on Steam when you're logged in, scroll to the bottom and you will see this:
The box above doesn't mention it, but this allows developers to see wishlists from a single ticked platform. Why is it important? Well, we speak to a huge amount of game developers and a very common issue we've come across since this was implemented was a very low volume of wishlists from Linux.
A lot lower than you would expect, some of which is naturally due to our lower market share (of course) but also because so many people just don't know this feature even exists. We've also ended up reminding a lot of our readers and followers on this, with a surprising amount of people having no idea it's even a thing.
Since it's a manual process (and only works if you tick just one platform), if you don't go and do it yourself your wishlist entries on Steam don't show up as being for Linux. So it's a feature that sounds good on paper and is well meaning but doesn't work that great in practice.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
- Click on your name in the top right, then "Account Details"
- Click on "Preferences" in the side menu
- Scroll to the bottom and you will find the "Platform Preferences" section.
Schattenspiegel Feb 22, 2019
One could also question why if an account does have a Linux or Mac client associated it is not automatically flagged as having interest in a Linux or Mac version of games. Even if a person uses multiple operating systems the moment they have a client on that OS they clearly are interested in gaming on that platform.
Would be nice to have the selection on top of the webpage somewhere near your profile icon or better yet, automatic. If you wishlist from native steam client or browser using Linux it should wishlist it as Linux.
edit: the other thing is that wishlisting windows games will make you wishlist huge. I would like to see sorting option there, to list Available Linux games and not yet Available. And don't fucking email me about sale when its not available for Linux yet
Last edited by Xpander on 22 February 2019 at 11:11 am UTC
wintermute Feb 22, 2019
Quoting: wintermuteI removed all my non-Linux wishlisted games the other week, I was fed up receiving emails about Windows-only games. Valve needs to come up with a better solution.
I switched off the emails instead.
Don't think so. I sometimes pragmatically buy a game on sale that I want to play even when it has only a Windows version.
So on one hand I'd like to inform the devs and publishers that I'm actually interested in a native Linux version, but not getting informed when it is on sale and (currently) has no Linux version is a no go for me.
I want a way to signal "I'd like to see this game on Linux and I'd pay for it" without making all the Windows stuff disappear and so far Steam doesn't seem to allow that.
Last edited by callcifer on 22 February 2019 at 12:11 pm UTC
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