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GOL Survey Results: August

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It’s time to get your monthly fix of stats now that the results for the August survey are available for you to take a look at and compare with results from previous months. This also marks the one-year anniversary of the GOL survey!

You can find the new survey for September here, so please fill that out if you haven’t already.

There’s been steady improvements in the quality of the questions and taking on board feedback, which many of you have noticed. The main one for this month is the addition of a graph showing the average amount of games bought, rather than the individual responses, so thanks to Fedso for that!

Please click on the images to enlarge. Once enlarged, you can also cycle through them using the arrows.

Respondents
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We had 1250 responses this month, just slightly below the 1496 last month, but still well within what we’re looking for, so thanks for everyone who took the time to fill it out.

As usual, we ask nicely that anyone on r/linux_gaming reading this please share the survey there if it hasn’t been shared already. This is more to ensure that the fluctuations which have messed up the results a bit in months past don’t return.

Question 1 - Do you currently use Linux as your primary PC gaming platform?
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Question 2 - Did you use Wine to play games last month?
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Question 3 - Did you use a Windows partition for gaming last month?
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Question 4 - What distribution do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
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Question 5 - What Desktop Environment do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
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KDE is back on top again and Gnome is back in third, with Unity second. It seems the normal order of things has been restored. Also, before I get a scolding, the i3 option was removed long ago, but this survey was written way back in July, so this will be the last time it is seen on GOL ;).

Question 6 - Did you change your primary Linux gaming distribution last month?
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Question 7 - What type of device do you primarily use for Linux gaming?
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I expected to see perhaps a few more laptops in this section, but it’s certainly no surprise that there are overwhelmingly desktop users. We’ll be keeping an eye on the Sofa-PC stats over the coming months.

Question 8 - What graphics card do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
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Here’s the first results with the “Integrated AMD” option added, so it seems we will get more accurate results from now on.

Question 9 - Which drivers do you use for that graphics card?
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AMD
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Intel
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Nvidia
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Question 10 - What CPU do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
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Question 11 - Did you exclusively buy Linux-supported games last month?
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Question 12 - How many Linux games did you buy last month?
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Last month I did a bit of analysis suggesting that Linux sales were in decline, and this new graph seems to support that. The exact number isn’t necessarily as important as the trend, since it's more prone to over-estimations and under-estimations to the respondents, who we’re asking to recall their purchases over the last 30 days. The little spikes around the time of the Steam summer and winter sales seems to indicate we’re getting pretty good data though.

However, as I said in the previous results, this isn’t necessarily negative and is most likely due to changes in purchasing habits (such as less bundles and more expensive games) and other reasons.

Question 13- Which of these retailers did you use to buy your Linux games last month?
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Unique Question 1 - Do you currently use emulators for gaming?
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This is one of those where if we had asked this question a couple of years ago, there would have been a lot more people using emulators considering there was a more limited choice of gaming options. We’re pretty fortunate to have a good selection on Linux, many of which are very actively developed.

Unique Question 2 - How's your interest in Shadow of Mordor?
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It’s pretty safe to say that Shadow of Mordor is a very popular game. As far as I recall, this has been the most popular game featured in the unique questions on the survey. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Community, Survey
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About the author -
After many years of floating through space on the back of a missile, following a successful career in beating people up for not playing Sega Saturn, the missile returned to earth. Upon returning, I discovered to my dismay that the once great console had been discontinued and Sega had abandoned the fight to dominate the world through 32-bit graphical capabilities.

After spending some years breaking breeze blocks with my head for money and being mocked by strangers, I have found a new purpose: to beat up people for not playing on Linux.
See more from me
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18 comments
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WorMzy Sep 14, 2015
The problem with 'how much did you spend' is that there lots of different currencies, and regional pricing differences, which would make it difficult to answer, and to gleam any sort of insight from the responses.

Unless you have a two-part question: 'What currency do you use? How much did you spend?'. Then the results could be collated by currency.
Pit Sep 14, 2015
As for the 'games bought' issue: I guess there's some saturation from (lots of?) older games. You grab them in some sale for little money, but after a while you have all that you're interested in, and after that there's only the new ones, which are mostly on the not-so-cheap side, so you (at least I...) buy at most one of those per month...

So yes, some aditional info on the total money spent would be interesting. Counting (only) in dollar should be OK, maybe you can add a popup-link to a currency converter to the next questionaire?
Mnoleg Sep 14, 2015
People are still buying games in Desura!!! I wonder if they know about the bankruptcy. It is a pity because I suppose the developers won't receive any of that money.
poisond Sep 14, 2015
QuoteQuestion 7 - What type of device do you primarily use for Linux gaming?
But ... my Desktop is my Sofa PC ...
Segata Sanshiro Sep 14, 2015
Quoting: WorMzyThe problem with 'how much did you spend' is that there lots of different currencies, and regional pricing differences, which would make it difficult to answer, and to gleam any sort of insight from the responses.

Unless you have a two-part question: 'What currency do you use? How much did you spend?'. Then the results could be collated by currency.

That's another issue as well, and one which I wouldn't really be prepared to resolve, the time could be spent improving other aspects of the survey and not ensuring we have the correct FOREX figures every month. It would be more straightforward to ask the respondent to convert to USD themselves, but I don't know how many people would actually bother filling out the survey if it meant digging into receipts, calculating how much they spent every month and then converting it to another currency.

In theory it's a nice idea and it would be a great statistic to have, but considering we can already get insights into how many games people are buying and also get an idea of how much through the retailers question, it really doesn't seem worth it, especially considering that there's no guarantee that the results we get would be accurate at all.
Nyamiou Sep 14, 2015
Quoting: Segata Sanshiro
Quoting: WorMzyThe problem with 'how much did you spend' is that there lots of different currencies, and regional pricing differences, which would make it difficult to answer, and to gleam any sort of insight from the responses.

Unless you have a two-part question: 'What currency do you use? How much did you spend?'. Then the results could be collated by currency.

That's another issue as well, and one which I wouldn't really be prepared to resolve, the time could be spent improving other aspects of the survey and not ensuring we have the correct FOREX figures every month. It would be more straightforward to ask the respondent to convert to USD themselves, but I don't know how many ponies would actually bother filling out the survey if it meant digging into receipts, calculating how much they spent every month and then converting it to another currency.

In theory it's a nice idea and it would be a great statistic to have, but considering we can already get insights into how many games ponies are buying and also get an idea of how much through the retailers question, it really doesn't seem worth it, especially considering that there's no guarantee that the results we get would be accurate at all.
Personally, I'll never remember how much I've spend on video games on a month. I think you could ask the price range of the games ordered, with options like :
0-10$ (cheap games)
10-30$ (inexpensive games)
30-50$ (expensive games)
+50$ (very expensive games)
MayeulC Sep 14, 2015
Quoting: NyamiouPersonally, I'll never remember how much I've spend on video games on a month. I think you could ask the price range of the games ordered, with options like :
0-10$ (cheap games)
10-30$ (inexpensive games)
30-50$ (expensive games)
+50$ (very expensive games)

As stated above, this would be quite unfair, given regional pricing, giving more or less weight to respondents depending on their location. Take for example Shadow of Mordor, according to SteamDB, the game costs $49.99 in the USA, $56.31 in Europe, and $13.32 in Russia :/
And this is not the most unevenly priced game...
fabertawe Sep 15, 2015
As an alternative to specifying how much was spent on games what about just a distinction between individually bought games and bundles? The biggest disparity must surely be there. I tend to think, rightly or wrongly, of a bundle as a single game purchase.

I probably paid more for Shadow Of Mordor than the previous two bundles combined (I don't tend to pay much for bundles I'm not that interested in or which only include one or two Linux games).
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