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Here's another way to look at the Linux market share on Steam

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I'm always interested to see what happens with the Linux market share on Steam, especially the bigger picture. Here's an alternative look at the Linux market share on Steam.

Credit to GOL fan "hardpenguin" for his idea, to check on how the rise of "Simplified Chinese" as a market on Steam has directly affected the Linux market share. The results are—interesting.

I should state that, while obvious to some, people still get confused by all this (especially me, I'm only human after all). We are talking about percentages, not absolute numbers. We have no idea what the real numbers are behind this, only the percentages Valve give us by surveying a set of their user base.

First of all, let's take a look at what's happened to the overall Linux market share as shown by Valve in their hardware survey. It doesn't look good, but keep reading after.


As I said, that looks like an unhappy chart. Over that exact same time period, let’s look at what happened on Steam with “Simplified Chinese” as a language in comparison with English:

Well then—that’s some big growth you’ve got there. One month can be written off as an anomaly, but the trend is clear there. So what happens when you compare what Steam shows as the overall Linux market share, against that same market share when you take out Simplified Chinese and when you’re just looking at English:

So, from our experiment here, it shows Linux is currently in a decline in terms of "overall market share" on Steam. No need to sugarcoat it or hide from it, the data is there. However, it's nothing close to how bad it may seem, given that you should obviously see how Simplified Chinese rising sharply has directly affected it, it's clear as day when you simply remove it.

To mention an important fact, Steam is not just growing in Asia, as shown by Valve's own info. Before we get people looking at the lines without Simplified Chinese and thinking Linux is going down by itself anyway. It's just that Asia has grown more rapidly than others. It's quite clearly a Windows-orientated marked too, so even if Linux has actually grown during that time, it's just been massively outpaced. The point? It's not as bad as it seems.

Something to keep in mind, that I’ve mentioned before numerous times: Steam is constantly growing. We don’t know what the true numbers are, so it’s literally impossible to get the real picture. As mentioned at the start, we just don’t know what the total amount is each time they do the Steam Hardware Survey in terms of the amount of people surveyed and the total amount of registered Steam users.

The fact remains that a lower percentage for Linux one month, against a higher overall number of users, can end up as an increase in total numbers of Linux gamers on Steam. I'm not saying it is or it isn't though. For us to know if the real amount of people using Linux for gaming on Steam is higher or lower, we need Valve to release the actual numbers behind the curtains. Something many people have been repeatedly asking for.

What will be interesting to see, is how Linux bounces back once the hype around certain popular games begins to fade. I don't want to repeat what I've already said too much, but it will happen. I imagine it will be at least a year before we see that happen and how far will Linux progress behind the scenes in that time to be ready? The open source Mesa drivers have come along at a staggering pace to improve AMD performance on Linux, decent VR supporting is slowly coming along, we've got games being released all the time and more. What we need to think about, is preparing for the bubble bursting back in our favour.

This was an interesting way to spend a Saturday evening, I shall return to our normal Linux gaming news on Monday!

Note: All this data was manually gathered and sorted by me, using the data available from Valve. Credit would be appreciated it you pinch it.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial, Steam
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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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75 comments
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jens Dec 3, 2017
  • Supporter
Quoting: appetrosyanI don't care anymore. Steam doesn't care about Linux, no surprise that the statistics drop.
They do care, but unfortunately they can't do magic.
Shmerl Dec 3, 2017
Quoting: jens
Quoting: appetrosyanI don't care anymore. Steam doesn't care about Linux, no surprise that the statistics drop.
They do care, but unfortunately they can't do magic.

I'd say they failed pretty badly at pushing supported gaming consoles with Linux. Their effort of Steam machines was underwhelming. However their major contributions to Vulkan, Mesa and etc. are more than welcome.


Last edited by Shmerl on 3 December 2017 at 10:22 pm UTC
Dunc Dec 4, 2017
Quoting: AlveKattHowever, remember the whole "Firewall of China" thing? An OS that gives full control to the user might be heavily frowned upon by the rulers in China. People have been put in jail for less over there.
That's actually a really good point that I hadn't considered. We all love Linux because of the freedom. The Chinese authorities are likely to hate it for exactly the same reason.

That said, I don't think it's currently anything to do with the low adoption over there, but if Linux were to become moderately popular I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of crackdown.
Boogiepop_Phantom Dec 4, 2017
@Kuduzkehpan
Quotealready changing to China-Russia side
You forgot North Korea and Iran. s/

In all seriousness after your post, especially third part, I want to buy copy of Windows and support all corporations and capitalists around the world.
Shmerl Dec 4, 2017
Quoting: Boogiepop_PhantomIn all seriousness after your post, especially third part, I want to buy copy of Windows and support all corporations and capitalists around the world.

This is going way off-topic, but how did you come to such conclusion? Power of corporations is a grim alternative to power of dictators.
TheRiddick Dec 4, 2017
PUBG could make it to Linux someday, but GTAV is a no no, pretty sure rockstar are quite anti linux.
skinnyraf Dec 4, 2017
The truth is: Linux share is going down however you slice the pie. Yes, the total market share collapsed, but whether you look at all excluding Chinese or at English only, there is a consistent drop of 20% over the last year.

20%.
ageres Dec 4, 2017
Steamspy says there are 275 million active users on Steam. 0.27% is about 750 thousand. Maybe it's true that Linux users migrate to Windows? Before PUBG and China, there were 150m and 1% respectively, which gave us 1.5 million of Linux users.
Liam Dawe Dec 4, 2017
Quoting: skinnyrafThe truth is: Linux share is going down however you slice the pie. Yes, the total market share collapsed, but whether you look at all excluding Chinese or at English only, there is a consistent drop of 20% over the last year.

20%.
Very true, something I mentioned on the article. However, see below. My reply also ties into this post:
Quoting: ageresSteamspy says there are 275 million active users on Steam. 0.27% is about 750 thousand. Maybe it's true that Linux users migrate to Windows? Before PUBG and China, there were 150m and 1% respectively, which gave us 1.5 million of Linux users.
When you simply take the difference and use that to work out the Linux user-base on Steam, it may seem like it has declined. It has in terms of percentages of course.

However, this is a survey, not absolute numbers. The fact that Steam in the Asian market has risen so much, it makes it very difficult to judge the Linux numbers, because it's a very Windows-centric market driven by Windows only games. It doesn't mean people have left Linux, but that Windows on Steam has grown so much it has pushed the Linux percentage down. You can clearly see this on the chart comparing languages.

To be clear, other markets (like English) are also increasing all the time on Steam which will again push the Linux percentages down, especially when the game that's the most popular on Steam isn't on Linux and it's growing.

All explained the article. It's nowhere near as bad as people think.

You can't simply compare the previous percentage, to the current one, when all markets on Steam are growing. I think that's where a lot of the confusion and worry is coming from.
Boogiepop_Phantom Dec 4, 2017
Probably off-topic, so put it under spoiler.

Spoiler, click me
Quotebut how did you come to such conclusion?
I am actually live in one of aforementioned countries, and I doubt they will bring any kind of freedom to the world.

QuotePower of corporations is a grim alternative to power of dictators.
No, just no. All the most horrible atrocities were commit by states, governments. Look at 20th century and even now. Corporations are little children compared to them. Plus I never had this resentment against corporations to begin with. I would take Microsoft over Putin any day.
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