First Statistics On Steam Linux Usage

[gamerk2]

But the Client dll must be a 64-bit version if the game runs as a 64-bit executable, the browser and the service can continue to run in 32-bit mode. Steam games being unable to run as 64-bit programs because the Steam client is 32-bit only is my biggest concern, apart from dependency issues with 32-bit libraries there's no real need to do a quick and dirty port to x64.

Shouldn't be a problem; apps are launched via Steam, and thats about as far as the Stream application goes once an app is launched. The only way there would be a problem would be if a 32-bit app can't launch a 64-bit one (in which case, you have SERIOUS problems that need to be fixed).

[curaga]

He meant the Steamworks dll library, or whatever it is that they use for Steam integration. That one obviously has to be 64-bit to enable 64-bit Steam-integrated apps.

[IanS]

In your calculations, you make the silly assumption the porting and testing process is free. Its not.

It's kind of amazing what happens when you read through a whole post before replying to it. You find out such wonderful things like the bit where I talked about the average price of 5 devs working for a full year (~$450k). While I know QA testers cost money, they don't cost nearly as much as the devs do, I also left out management for simplicity sake. I also made the even sillier assumption that greedy Bethesda would ever do a 75% off sale any time soon on a game they are still charging full retail on and that everyone would buy it while on said fictional sale which leaves some breathing room for the bits I skipped over. For instance the best sale I have seen to date was 50% and even if everyone bought it at that price you are looking at 3 million in sales instead of 1.5.

The 1 in 5 bit is likely pretty close though, considering there have been over 10 million units of Skyrim sold to date and over 50 million Steam accounts (with a sizable minority bought by Linux users already I might add). Also the estimated 90k per dev per year was also fairly accurate based on last years average salary for a game programmer (~92k).

[Calinou]

Another problem linux has as compared to windows is driver/userland software availability for expensive gaming controllers - mice, keyboards and others for all available brands (no I will not buy roccat just because they support linux, I like my current gear better).

Logitech stuff works fine with Linux 90% of the time. I have a G11 keyboard (not really needed ) and a G500 mouse (this one isn't really expensive today, but it works great), both work fine. Try before whining.

[Ancurio]

Shouldn't be a problem; apps are launched via Steam, and thats about as far as the Stream application goes once an app is launched. The only way there would be a problem would be if a 32-bit app can't launch a 64-bit one (in which case, you have SERIOUS problems that need to be fixed).

No. Some games use Steam for things such as server listings and achievements, for which you need steamworks integration. Only for games that don't, it is a matter of "launching an exe and leaving it alone".

[mememe]

He meant the Steamworks dll library, or whatever it is that they use for Steam integration. That one obviously has to be 64-bit to enable 64-bit Steam-integrated apps.

No. Some games use Steam for things such as server listings and achievements, for which you need steamworks integration. Only for games that don't, it is a matter of "launching an exe and leaving it alone".

That's what I meant. The client DLL is what Steam enabled games use to interact with the Steam network and what people commonly refer to as the Steam client is actually the Steam browser. As you cannot load a 32-bit dll/so into a 64-bit process (that's why you cannot run 32-bit plugins in 64-bit Firefox), the client and overlay dll/so need to have the same bitness as the game that uses them. The browser itself is obviously always running in a different process so bitness is not an issue.

[gamerk2]

That's what I meant. The client DLL is what Steam enabled games use to interact with the Steam network and what people commonly refer to as the Steam client is actually the Steam browser. As you cannot load a 32-bit dll/so into a 64-bit process (that's why you cannot run 32-bit plugins in 64-bit Firefox), the client and overlay dll/so need to have the same bitness as the game that uses them. The browser itself is obviously always running in a different process so bitness is not an issue.

Well, I can't speak for the internals of how Steam works, but, worst case, if some achievement is unlocked, you could pass messages directly to the Steam .exe, avoiding the .dll issue. I can say theres no issues on Windows, but then again, there aren't many apps compiled as x64 anyways. [Heck, even getting devs [Bethdesia] to remember to set the LAA flag is a pain...]

[mememe]

Well, I can't speak for the internals of how Steam works, but, worst case, if some achievement is unlocked, you could pass messages directly to the Steam .exe, avoiding the .dll issue. I can say theres no issues on Windows, but then again, there aren't many apps compiled as x64 anyways. [Heck, even getting devs [Bethdesia] to remember to set the LAA flag is a pain...]

Hehe, Just looked at my Steam directory. Windows version has two steamclient dll's, one for 32-bit and one for 64-bit, but only one Browser. A DLL makes it easier for game developers to integrate the product (no need to write to a pipe or socket, when you actually need only a single function call to handle an unlocked achievement).

[tonydisalva]

Hello
Oh well, I missed the 'OS' item is click-able.

[efikkan]

The new numbers doesn't seem too bad:

Title                       Jan     Dec     Diff

Windows 8 (all)              8.76%   6.93%   +1.83%
Windows 7 (all)             69.73%  70.47%   -0.74%
Windows Vista (all)          6.02%   6.96%   -0.94%
Windows XP (all)            10.05%  10.44%   -0.39%
OS X (all)                   3.56%   3.72%   -0.16%
Ubuntu (all)                 1.12%   0.80%   +0.32%
Ubuntu + Other               1.88%   1.51%   +0.37%
Rounding errors                      0.03%

Ubuntu 12.10 64 bit          0.43%   0.29%   +0.14%
Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS 64 bit    0.33%   0.26%   +0.07%
Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS           0.17%   0.13%   +0.04%
Ubuntu 12.10                 0.19%   0.12%   +0.07%
Other                        0.76%   0.71%   +0.05%

I think the total Linux share will get close to 3% this year, but 5% would be great.