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Every month Valve put out their hardware survey, inside it shows off the market-share of operating systems and Linux has continued to decline.

For September 2017, Linux was at 0.60%. This is far from where Linux market-share on Steam was some time ago, although it has never been all that high anyway.

Here's a chart provided to me by EndeavourAccuracy (thanks!), which shows the unfortunate trend:

There could be many reasons for this, all of which I've probably mentioned before at some point. The one thing I would like to stress though, is that market-share declining doesn't necessarily mean less people. The amount of people using Linux for gaming on Steam, might actually be increasing, just not as quickly as Windows so it gets swallowed up. We know for a fact Steam is constantly growing and perhaps in markets where Linux isn't popular pushing the Linux share down. However, the opposite could obviously be true too.

I don't claim to have any answers on it. All we can do is speculate, since we know nothing about how Valve actually pick the systems that get selected for a survey. We know nothing about the numbers behind the percentages, or well, anything really.

We do need to take into account people who dual-boot, which isn't going to be a small number. Even our own limited survey shows about 31.78% of people also use Windows.

Obviously it's not good to see this trend, but as long as Linux games sell enough for a developer to be happy, that's the main point. Going by the last time I spoke to multiple developers about sales of their Linux games, most games mentioned in that article were selling well above the current percentage of Linux gamers as tracked by Steam.

I highly doubt Feral Interactive would also be announcing another Linux port, if the real amount of Linux gamers was declining either, since the types of titles they port would likely need a lot of sales to be worth it, yet they have two new titles currently being teased for Linux.

What are your thoughts on this?

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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Mountain Man Oct 2, 2017
Quoting: berillionsIf Feral, Paradox, Obsidian, inXile, Larian stop to port their games on Linux, i go back to Windows completely.
Nah, I would go console before I ever went back to Windows.
Mountain Man Oct 2, 2017
Quoting: VinceNardelliStill, Valve has done a pretty crappy job with steam machine and the whole idea of linux more optimised than windows.
This is really the problem. Valve was really excited about Linux gaming, got us excited about Linux gaming, got a few developers excited about Linux gaming, and then it's like they just sort of lost interest. I was really hoping they were more dedicated to this whole Linux thing than they have been.
VinceNardelli Oct 2, 2017
Quoting: Mountain Man
Quoting: VinceNardelliStill, Valve has done a pretty crappy job with steam machine and the whole idea of linux more optimised than windows.
This is really the problem. Valve was really excited about Linux gaming, got us excited about Linux gaming, got a few developers excited about Linux gaming, and then it's like they just sort of lost interest. I was really hoping they were more dedicated to this whole Linux thing than they have been.

Losing interest is kind of their habit, from developing OS to hardware to games.

Can people really get excited about the VR after all their lost interests? I don't wish them too much luck on that because frankly they...don't deserve it
Tuxee Oct 2, 2017
Quoting: Leopard
QuoteEven our own limited survey shows about 31.78% of people also use Windows.

Including you :P

Anyway , main thing is we are so much dependent on Steam. We need at least one out of Steam but yet popular title.


Does "War Thunder" suffice?
Darkhogg Oct 2, 2017
I can tell you one thing: I have Steam auto-running on Linux all day. It's very rare for me to go to Windows *AND* open Steam. Yet, the one time I did so, a hardware survey windows popped up. COME ON!!!
Dunc Oct 2, 2017
Quoting: peterp771I wonder how much Chinese users, many of whom use pirated Windows software, contribute to these numbers. It would be interesting to see a regional breakdown.
As Leopard says too, that's actually a really good point. Steam's currently exploding in popularity in China, and they're pretty much all on Windows.

But it's interesting that on the one hand we have the Netmarketshare story (even if it's not quite as earth-shattering as it first seemed), and on the other we have this. I think it just reflects the poor state of the Linux gaming market. Overall we're on the rise, but gaming is still difficult. Don't get me wrong; it's infinitely better than it was just three or four years ago, but there are still plenty of major developers who won't even look at Linux. We're nowhere near the stage where it's simply expected that a newly-announced game will be on Linux, and unusual if it isn't. Until that changes, it'll be an uphill battle to persuade gamers to switch. Maybe Atari will give us another boost, like Valve did.

But if the big games stop coming to Linux, I stop playing the big games. It's as simple as that.
titi Oct 2, 2017
For me the steam hardware survey for linux users is nonsens. Windows users get this survey like spam and are not willing to fill it out anymore becasue it pops up so often and linux users nearly never see it pop up. Whatever is going on there, for me this survey simply doesn't work!
ShoNuff!!! Oct 2, 2017
Recently, I had to install Windows and dual boot after years (2003) of linux only because I have a AMD Vega 64... which is not yet supported on Arch linux unless I downgrade kernel (or compile and config) and a few other items. So I wait patiently for kernel 4.15 hoping AMDGPU DC is implemented.


Last edited by ShoNuff!!! on 2 October 2017 at 11:38 pm UTC
ShoNuff!!! Oct 2, 2017
Quoting: DuncBut if the big games stop coming to Linux, I stop playing the big games. It's as simple as that.

You say no tux no bucks... but for most it's no triple A no tux. I was on board but lately... since building my new gaming rig... and being forced to use Widows in dual boot... I have enjoyed the big titles I had been missing for the last 14 years.

Though Vulkan is here... unless developers port it means less and less people stick around. Unless Feral or someone else can get deals to port for same day releases (or within a month release) market share will keep slipping for linux gaming.
finaldest Oct 3, 2017
Steam supposedly had,

7 million users in January 2014
15 million users as of September 2017

Linux share has roughly halved during this time frame.
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