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PayPalThe Steam Hardware & Software Survey for February 2026 is live and it's looking a bit odd, with a huge swing towards Simplified Chinese.
As usual when this happens, the Linux share drops as well and one of the biggest drops we've seen in a single month. It's entirely likely that Valve will do some sort of correction here as they've done before. But for now the data shows:
- Windows 96.61% +1.99%
- Linux 2.23% -1.15%
- macOS 1.16% -0.85%
For languages English is now at 22.27% (-14.74%) with Simplified Chinese at 54.60% (+30.74%). For a single month, something about this doesn't seem quite right. Especially with Windows 10 64 bit seeing +12.46%.
The usual snapshot from our dedicated Steam Tracker page:
For just Linux, the popular distributions listed are:
- SteamOS Holo 64 bit 23.83% +23.83%
- Arch Linux 64 bit 9.07% +9.07%
- CachyOS 64 bit 8.59% +8.59%
- Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit 6.62% +4.29%
- Bazzite 64 bit 5.79% +5.79%
- Freedesktop SDK 25.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit 5.26% -1.08%
- Ubuntu Core 24 64 bit 3.82% -0.10%
- Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS 64 bit 2.83% -0.94%
- Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit 2.59% -3.98%
- Other 31.58% +16.20%
I'll be keeping an eye on it to see if Valve tweak anything.
Source: Valve
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
About the author - Liam Dawe
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked 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.
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15 comments
fenglengshun 12 hours ago
Chinese New Year, as usual.
0 Likes
Liam Dawe 12 hours ago
Quoting: fenglengshunChinese New Year, as usual.We do usually see a drop every February, but nothing like this, it's usually quite minor.
1 Likes
Did Steam break through the Great Firewall of China all of a sudden?
0 Likes
mr-victory 12 hours ago
Win10 on its way to dethrone win11 lmao
5 Likes
Why doesn't Steam just collect hardware data automatically, are there any legal issues with it? I'd like to see smooth statistics without sampling swings every month.
3 Likes
Quoting: vic-bayWhy doesn't Steam just collect hardware data automatically, are there any legal issues with it? I'd like to see smooth statistics without sampling swings every month.This is not really a problem of sampling swing, it's chinese new year. Every year, there are massive rush of work in China / southeast asia until mid jan, then relax time starts, and people suddenly play many more games, with many probably only playing at this time. This culminates with chinese new year's golden week. Since Linux is not used much for Gaming there, you automatically see a huge drop at that point. So factually, during that period, there are way more Chinese players, and they factually use windows more than they use Linux.
It's true that a yearly or at least quarterly average would give a broader picture though.
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The last diagram in your steam tracker page "Linux market share on Steam, another way to look at it" is also interesting.
1 Likes
I'd love to see actual counts in addition to the percentages, since a drop in percentage doesn't necessarily mean an actual drop in users. But I don't see such detailed info on Steam's survey results page, so I don't expect that's possible to report on here.
0 Likes
Are there any changes for English only clients? This has been used in the past to avoid bias from Chinese Steam clients.
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Since the Chinese are probably using pirated versions of Windows, what's stopping them from using something Kylin? I'm guessing it is that darn anti-cheat not working on Linux. Or the Chinese don't care.
0 Likes
Quoting: voytrekkAre there any changes for English only clients? This has been used in the past to avoid bias from Chinese Steam clients.https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/#engsplitanchor
8.29% for Linux on English only.
pretty wild.
3 Likes
GustyGhost 2 hours ago
I was kind of right:
I'll be the one to say it:
Consider all those who got gassed up on the cyclical $NEW_WINDOWS bad streak who tried out Linux on their gaming computers, only to feel overwhelmed or burned or whatever by the differences (of which newbies will always make mountains out of mole hills) who then promptly return to the familiarity of Windows.
I suspect we'll see another small decrease next month too.
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GustyGhost 2 hours ago
Further supporting my theory
They got frustrated or disappointed and promptly reinstalled Windows because the anticheat in their favorite Furry hero shooter refuses to support Linux.
Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit 2.59% -3.98%Linux Mint, the newbie distro that all those starry-eyed Windows migrants were told to try out -3.98%.
They got frustrated or disappointed and promptly reinstalled Windows because the anticheat in their favorite Furry hero shooter refuses to support Linux.
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Or they updated:
Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit 6.62% +4.29%
Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit 2.59% -3.98%
Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit 6.62% +4.29%
Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit 2.59% -3.98%
4 Likes
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