Recently we had news that DRM-free store GOG has been struggling with losses, and here's Steam continuing to just smash through previous records.
With the previous all-time high of 26,922,926 users online back in April 2021, on November 28 it yet again broke the record with 27,384,959 according to SteamDB. At the time the record hit, around 7.8 million were actually in-game and while it's of course spread across so many, the winner continues to be Valve's own free to play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with about 915,791 online playing.
It's not a big surprise this time around, since it hit during a big sale event so no doubt millions of people are picking up and playing a fresh set thanks to the discounts.
A question for you: do you expect the Steam Deck to push Steam player numbers even higher? For a lot of people, it will be an additional device but no doubt it's a device that will be pulling in some new users who didn't previously use Steam or even a PC. It will be thoroughly interesting to see if there's much of an effect there.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Proton changed that. It's generally easier now to have them in Steam.
I for one would have bought likely hundreds of games if GOG would have provided that Galaxy client for Linux (https://www.gog.com/wishlist/galaxy/release_gog_galaxy_20_for_linux)... Now every penny has gone to GabeN and Steam
It's the same with me. Although a few euros also went to Stadia.
GOG has quite a few problems. First of all, the prices of old games went up quite considerably. Recently they added some Star Trek games for 10€ each ... no thanks. It is also simply more convenient to buy on Steam (wonderful Linux support), quite a few games I would be interested in are also not available on GOG. And there seem to be issues with developers as well. One time I contacted one about supporting Linux on GOG (there was a Linux version of his game on Steam) and he did not sound happy about GOG at all. Don't know why and did not ask.
From what I read and hear (even from Minigalaxy developer), the API in GOG is not good and it's hard to use. So even the developers like Steam in this case much more than GOG, because it's less burden to publish the game there than on GOG.
For example in Minigalaxy you sometimes get wrong information about the game from API, like what is the correct executable for the game. It would be much better if they just make it open, so people could improve it.
I only buy from Steam those few games that aren't DRM-free but that are so good that I'm dying to play them (or support them) while they're still fresh out of the oven; stuff like the two Nier games, Dark Souls, the remake of Resident Evil 2, etc. I seriously respect Valve for the effort they've been putting into Linux these past few years, and I'd love to support them more, but I honestly can't come to terms with the modern DRM model. I guess it's a good thing they're so big a company that they won't actually miss my money.
Re: the OP's question, I don't think the Steam Deck's sales numbers (judging by the pre-orders) will prove relevant enough - what's a few more thousands, even tens of thousands, compared to ~27 millions? But as far as Linux usage is concerned, then provided the Steam Deck is as good as it sounds I believe we'll easily reach 2%.
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