Steam's Linux Marketshare Ticks Up Ever So Slightly For May

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Steam's Linux Marketshare Ticks Up Ever So Slightly For May

With the start of a new month, Valve has published their software/hardware survey numbers for the month prior. For May 2019, the Steam Linux usage did tick-up slightly on a percentage basis...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-May-2019-Numbers

[prueba_hola]

we will still in ~1% untill
Ads on Tv or papers about Ubuntu
laptop/tower on hypermarkets running Ubuntu

[Zoll]

These numbers are consistent from other sources as well (e.g. XPlane11). The Linux gaming market share is sub 1% overall.

This will not change significantly even if ALL the games are ported to Linux. Ask yourself: Why wasn't there a surge in this percentage after Proton was released by valve? It suddenly made thousands of games readily available yet the Linux market share didn't budge. The reality is most users could care less about the OS and they will most likely stick to whatever that came preinstalled with their PC.

Now if you ship a successful console with Linux, this would change the % significantly. Otherwise, we'd always be in the sub 1% (or 2% at best) market share.

[abott]

Moronic to say if all games worked it wouldn't increase.

Nobody cares if shims fix some games. Official ports are the only thing that matter. As it should be. Guaranteed stability and support or bust.

[loganj]

at least is not going down

[humbug]

These numbers are consistent from other sources as well (e.g. XPlane11). The Linux gaming market share is sub 1% overall.

This will not change significantly even if ALL the games are ported to Linux. Ask yourself: Why wasn't there a surge in this percentage after Proton was released by valve? It suddenly made thousands of games readily available yet the Linux market share didn't budge. The reality is most users could care less about the OS and they will most likely stick to whatever that came preinstalled with their PC.

Now if you ship a successful console with Linux, this would change the % significantly. Otherwise, we'd always be in the sub 1% (or 2% at best) market share.

Yup I agree.

But also for Linux gaming on Steam to see a big uptick in market share we need the Linux desktop in general to see a big uptick in usage converting lots of Windows and Mac OSX users. One of the big distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, Manjaro etc) needs to hit it big and make all the right industry partnerships to make sure PCs ship with well configured user friendly Linux and of course address any remaining non-gaming concerns in the way that Valve is addressing the gaming eco system. Both Microsoft and Apple aggressively push their products through the entire supply chain and make sure it ends up in the right places, to compete with that it's not enough to merely be a good product.

Linux desktop has to grow in sync with Linux gaming and feed off each other's success. Valve has turned out to be a great ally on the gaming front. But we need a similar push to happen in the the general desktop.

[tildearrow]

The IBM-Microsoft-Nvidia partnership does everything to prevent the Linux gaming success.

Without proof, I cannot believe you.

- IBM is more than just Linux. Seriously, you are so traumatized about IBM buying Red Hat...
- Microsoft is actually adopting Linux.
- NVIDIA... I might agree but actually the issue (all of that lock-in) is not Linux-only.

[blacknova]

Not surprising really, and, unless something drastic like total ban on Windows in China happen, nothing will change fast.
I'd guess that current numbers more or less reflect how much developers have steam installed on their computers.

[Bobby Bob]

It would be easy to dismiss these numbers and say 'boo hoo, it's not working, Linux isn't growing fast enough!', but when you're starting from 0.81% (check last months stats, it wasn't 0.82, Steam Stats are glitchy), increasing to 0.84% in a month is pretty darn good! That's an increase of the number of Linux gamers by 3.7%!

If we maintained a 3.7%/month rate of growth for 6 months, in 6 months we'd be up to 1.04% marketshare. Another 6 months later we'd be up to 1.3% marketshare and another 6 months after that we'd be up to 1.6% marketshare.

But alas, sadly Steam stats don't flow that way, they bounce ^up and _down, but importantly the trend since Proton released has been one of growth, when you smooth out the data points. When Proton launched, Linux was only at 0.78%, the number of Linux gamers has increased by 7.7% in just 9 months.

That's 7.7% growth in overall global stats, despite the fact that Steam has become much more popular in China, where Linux marketshare is significantly lower than in western countries stats are much lower. If Steam was strictly based in the US, Linux user stats would be even higher and almost at 2% already.

The most important take away from all of this is: Linux IS growth.

Which means time is on our side, what we're doing is working. It shouldn't be surprising that Linux growth is slow, at the moment, while there are still so many roadblocks to Linux usage. Software compatibility and gamer UX is still a massive issue, Proton has significantly improved the situation but we are still only hovering at roughly 60% of PC games being playable on Linux, with the bulk majority of those which are unplayable, being AAA and multiplayer PvP games, aka the real money makers of the industry.

But we know EAC has confirmed that Proton compatibility is at "beta" stage, and we now have confirmation that BattlEye is also working with Valve on Proton compatibility. Both would provide another surge in increased number of games available, which would mean more users on top of the steady growth we already have. And the end of life of Windows 7 is approaching next year, and we know lots of gamers are not terribly happy with the idea of using Windows 10. So we know lots of gamers are in the market for a new OS.

Never forget, every time Linux marketshare grows, even just a tiny little bit, the amount of support Linux gets also increases, which makes it even easier for future gamers to switch to Linux, which means more users, more growth, and more support.

This is a marathon, not a sprint, time is on our side, and we are gaining on the competition. We just have to keep at it!

[Guest]

These numbers are consistent from other sources as well (e.g. XPlane11). The Linux gaming market share is sub 1% overall.

This will not change significantly even if ALL the games are ported to Linux. Ask yourself: Why wasn't there a surge in this percentage after Proton was released by valve? It suddenly made thousands of games readily available yet the Linux market share didn't budge. The reality is most users could care less about the OS and they will most likely stick to whatever that came preinstalled with their PC.

Now if you ship a successful console with Linux, this would change the % significantly. Otherwise, we'd always be in the sub 1% (or 2% at best) market share.

SteamPlay hasn't made these games suddenly work. They did for a long time, if you were to put in the effort to set up a wine prefix for them. It only made it slightly easier (you still need to click around to enable a beta channel and enable SteamPlay for unapproved games).