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Steam hits a new all-time high for users online, Linux share rises

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Two quick bits of Steam news to cover this wonderful Monday morning. As expected, Steam does still appear to be growing.

SteamDB made a Twitter post yesterday to note that the previous historic concurrent user count on Steam set back in January 2018 of 18,537,490 was smashed to a new record of 18,801,944 online. A huge number of people of course but plenty are likely to be bots. What's interesting, is that against the same previous record, this year there were less people actually in-game. In January 2018 there were around 7 million in-game while this year with the new concurrent record only about 6 million were in-game.

While we're on the subject of Steam, their monthly Hardware Survey went out again and it showed Linux had risen to 0.9%. Going by our dedicated Steam Tracker, that's the highest it's been for at least 16 months now.

All good news as Valve continue putting resources into improving Linux gaming through funding graphics driver improvements for AMD, the new Container system, funding DXVK+Wine development for Proton, this new Gamescope and likely more to come still. We still need to find out what Steam Cloud Gaming is (#1, #2) which could see a reveal later this year perhaps.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial, Steam
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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23 comments
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This is a hardware survey, it means almost nothing for OS usage.

Valve has perfect realtime data of the operating system of every Steam user in the world. Just like a browser. They don't need a stupid inconsistent survey to achieve that. I still don't understand why they pretend they have any accuracy with this current sampling method.
Maath Feb 3, 2020
So, what are the 12.5 million doing? Sifting through the morass trying to find a game to play? Or is it, if you have your Steam client open, you are a concurrent user?
Eike Feb 3, 2020
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Quoting: MaathSo, what are the 12.5 million doing? Sifting through the morass trying to find a game to play? Or is it, if you have your Steam client open, you are a concurrent user?

Yes
Liam Dawe Feb 3, 2020
Quoting: no_information_hereThis is a hardware survey, it means almost nothing for OS usage.
And what does the hardware do? Run an operating system.

It's accurate enough most of the time.
jens Feb 3, 2020
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Nice to see that the Linux numbers seem to normalize.
Surely no coincidence with the decrease of Chinese users ;)


Last edited by jens on 3 February 2020 at 7:31 pm UTC
orochi_kyo Feb 3, 2020
"As expected, Steam does still appear to be growing."

"A huge number of people of course but plenty are likely to be bots."

It is like saying

"On communism, there is food for everyone"

"Sadly most of the food is rotten"

This is pretty much your opinion Liam, unless you have some source you chose not to share with us.

I just don't get this contradiction.
Liam Dawe Feb 3, 2020
Quoting: orochi_kyo"As expected, Steam does still appear to be growing."

"A huge number of people of course but plenty are likely to be bots."

It is like saying

"On communism, there is food for everyone"

"Sadly most of the food is rotten"

This is pretty much your opinion Liam, unless you have some source you chose not to share with us.

I just don't get this contradiction.
It is growing, we know it is. Every time Valve report on it, the number of active purchasing users has increased.

I said a huge number of people, plenty of bots. Just making a point that there will be bots amongst it. I did not say most of them or all of them are bots, there is no contradiction in what I said at all.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 3 February 2020 at 8:50 pm UTC
deathxxx Feb 3, 2020
I dont remember i get even one survey....????
How to?
Purple Library Guy Feb 3, 2020
Quoting: kingofrodeoI also got the survey on Saturday. My system hasn't change in a long time.
Me too. This is getting weird.
Purple Library Guy Feb 3, 2020
Quoting: jensNice to see that the Linux numbers seem to normalize.
Surely no coincidence with the decrease of Chinese users ;)
Yeah, noticed that. Still, even with that decline the total Steam numbers seem to be rising anyway, so some of that rise has to be new Linux users.
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