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Well this sure is interesting, Valve have announced some flaws in their Steam Hardware Survey that caused cyber cafes to over-count users.

Here's what Valve said in full:

The latest Steam Hardware Survey incorporates a number of fixes that address over counting of cyber cafe customers that occurred during the prior seven months.

Historically, the survey used a client-side method to ensure that systems were counted only once per year, in order to provide an accurate picture of the entire Steam user population. It turns out, however, that many cyber cafes manage their hardware in a way that was causing their customers to be over counted.

Around August 2017, we started seeing larger-than-usual movement in certain stats, notably an increase in Windows 7 usage, an increase in quad-core CPU usage, as well as changes in CPU and GPU market share. This period also saw a large increase in the use of Simplified Chinese. All of these coincided with an increase in Steam usage in cyber cafes in Asia, whose customers were being over counted in the survey.

It took us some time to root-cause the problem and deploy a fix, but we are confident that, as of April 2018, the Steam Hardware Survey is no longer over counting users.

It's good to see Valve be open about this and get it fixed, as many people suspected issues for a while now and it's interesting to see some validation of certain theories about cyber cafe use. The funny thing is, someone mentioned this to me on reddit today and I didn't actually think it would have been such a big issue, so it's fun to be wrong.

It's also interesting to note, that according to what Valve said, you're only supposed to be counted once a year, although many of us have seen an issue where it will come up many times within Windows or while using Steam with Wine and rarely on the native Linux client. For all we know, this could have been part of the issue that's now solved.

We will be tracking it on our dedicated page. It certainly will be interesting to see what happens in future. What are your thoughts?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam, Valve
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johndoe86x May 4, 2018
What I hear was happening was that most of the cyber cafes had Nvidia and Windows machines. So when a different user would log in to a "new" machine on their Steam account, the Steam survey would pop up.

So, I don't think it was Deep Freeze or formatting, it was dozens of users logging into the same machine with different Steam accounts on a daily basis.
Koopacabras May 4, 2018
Quoting: g000hI've suspected inaccuracies in the Steam counts, for a long time. One other Windows versus other OS thing that I've noticed is the fact that Steam auto-starts on Windows when you log on to Windows. With my Linux desktops, Steam only logs on, when I launch the client myself.

good point if all the windows users are auto-starting every boot the chance of getting a survey surely increases. It might even artificially increase windows online presence at steam.
Well, it is nice that Valve seem to be trying to address flaws in their system. I will repeat my mantra, though:

If you don't release your methodology, your stats are junk.
dvd May 4, 2018
I've got the survey 4 to 6 times so far.
Beamboom May 4, 2018
I bet the problem relates to viritualisation? If I were a cafe owner I'd virtualize every os instance exposed to the customers to easily wipe clean the machines regularly.
LinuxGamesTV May 4, 2018
Quoting: g000hI've suspected inaccuracies in the Steam counts, for a long time. One other Windows versus other OS thing that I've noticed is the fact that Steam auto-starts on Windows when you log on to Windows. With my Linux desktops, Steam only logs on, when I launch the client myself. ...

That's not true. On KDE you have an Autostart, too. So when you log on to KDE Steam auto-starts.
LinuxGamesTV May 4, 2018
Quoting: chancho_zombie
Quoting: g000hI've suspected inaccuracies in the Steam counts, for a long time. One other Windows versus other OS thing that I've noticed is the fact that Steam auto-starts on Windows when you log on to Windows. With my Linux desktops, Steam only logs on, when I launch the client myself.

good point if all the windows users are auto-starting every boot the chance of getting a survey surely increases. It might even artificially increase windows online presence at steam.

Wrong. I have Steam on KDE in Autostart and get no Survey over Years now.
Koopacabras May 4, 2018
Quoting: BdMdesigN
Quoting: chancho_zombie
Quoting: g000hI've suspected inaccuracies in the Steam counts, for a long time. One other Windows versus other OS thing that I've noticed is the fact that Steam auto-starts on Windows when you log on to Windows. With my Linux desktops, Steam only logs on, when I launch the client myself.

good point if all the windows users are auto-starting every boot the chance of getting a survey surely increases. It might even artificially increase windows online presence at steam.

Wrong. I have Steam on KDE in Autostart and get no Survey over Years now.

I also have KDE (plasma) I don't remember Steam autostarting ever, and I also use OpenSuse. We are talking about the defaults, I mean you can make steam autostart but's not default. Maybe you are right but I also meant the concurrent users count online that's one thing Steam likes to brag, I think that number it's a bit artificial since there are quite a number of windows users that installed steam and the program is always running (once u entered the username and pass and set the thing up).
lucifertdark May 4, 2018
Quoting: g000hI've suspected inaccuracies in the Steam counts, for a long time. One other Windows versus other OS thing that I've noticed is the fact that Steam auto-starts on Windows when you log on to Windows. With my Linux desktops, Steam only logs on, when I launch the client myself.
Steam works the exact same way in Windows as Linux, you decide whether you want it to start with the OS or not, mine starts when I say it starts not when Windows starts, never let anything auto-start with the OS, especially Windows as that's a surefire way to get your system infected.

ps. we've been telling Valve for years their survey was screwed, it's not tinfoil hats cutting off oxygen to our brains.


Last edited by lucifertdark on 4 May 2018 at 7:21 am UTC
Eike May 4, 2018
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Quoting: tonRSome CC using harddrive-less computer, boot via LAN. (I don't know how to explained it correctly)

It is correct. The technology is called PXE.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_booting
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