Steam On Linux Ticks Lower For October 2020

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Steam On Linux Ticks Lower For October 2020

Valve has published their latest Steam Survey results. For October 2020 the Linux gaming marketshare pulled back or at least not keeping up with the pace of Steam's growing user-base...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Linux-October-2020

[ed31337]

Unfortunately, the price of high speed wired cable Internet access keeps marching upwards in my area. Some people are paying upwards of $100/mo now, plus complaining every other day when it completely falls flat on it's face from being overloaded by all the work from home, remote learning, and unemployed 4K streaming NetFlix people all avoiding COVID-19. It's totally ridiculous.

I cut the cord and just exist off 4G cell phone data tethering, with a 3GB/mo data cap. It sucks, but at least it doesn't break the budget and it always works.

Combine that with migrating all my computer work to a Raspberry Pi 4, and well, sorry Steam, but your massive online multi-gigabyte 3D video games just don't fit into my life right now.

If there was a source of entertaining offline, compact algorithmic games that didn't demand huge downloads and 3D graphics capabilities beyond my RPi4, I'd be all over that.

[alex79]

For the first time in 2 years I had to use Windows and logged in to steam and guess what? Steam survey poped up. It never pops in Linux, in the 10 years of use or so. Something's not right.

[tildearrow]

Unfortunately, the price of high speed wired cable Internet access keeps marching upwards in my area. Some people are paying upwards of $100/mo now, plus complaining every other day when it completely falls flat on it's face from being overloaded by all the "work from home," "remote learning," and unemployed "4K streaming" NetFlix people all avoiding COVID-19. It's totally ridiculous.

I cut the cord and just exist off 4G cell phone data tethering, with a 3GB/mo data cap. It sucks, but at least it doesn't break the budget and it always works.

Combine that with migrating all my computer work to a Raspberry Pi 4, and well, sorry Steam, but your massive online multi-gigabyte 3D video games just don't fit into my life anymore.

If there was a source of entertaining offline, compact algorithmic games that didn't demand huge downloads and 3D graphics capabilities beyond my RPi4, I'd be all over that.

That's too bad, when they should be delivering much more... (like some Asian countries delivering very high speeds at low costs)

[birdie]

For the first time in 2 years I had to use Windows and logged in to steam and guess what? Steam survey poped up. It never pops in Linux, in the 10 years of use or so. Something's not right.

A sample size of one vs 100 million regular Steam users. Right. As we haven't heard this theory a thousand times already.

[skeevy420]

Unfortunately, the price of high speed wired cable Internet access keeps marching upwards in my area. Some people are paying upwards of $100/mo now, plus complaining every other day when it completely falls flat on it's face from being overloaded by all the work from home, remote learning, and unemployed 4K streaming NetFlix people all avoiding COVID-19. It's totally ridiculous.

I cut the cord and just exist off 4G cell phone data tethering, with a 3GB/mo data cap. It sucks, but at least it doesn't break the budget and it always works.

Combine that with migrating all my computer work to a Raspberry Pi 4, and well, sorry Steam, but your massive online multi-gigabyte 3D video games just don't fit into my life right now.

If there was a source of entertaining offline, compact algorithmic games that didn't demand huge downloads and 3D graphics capabilities beyond my RPi4, I'd be all over that.

....that's the Ajit Pai and Republican plan in action. Provide crap infrastructure by allowing it to degrade and doing minimal repairs to get people to move onto overly expensive wireless data plans. That's why they put a Verizon shill in charge of the FCC -- to ensure that happens and to do jack-shit when we complain.

I know from experience that wireless doesn't always work. I, too, have a 3GB budget plan, AT&T, and it gets overloaded every time there's a power outage or the cable network goes down; sometimes when it's just nothing (tourists overloading the network I suspect), but guaranteed to have issues the second wired internet goes down or power goes out. Verizon and other providers are just as effected. It sucks that wireless is neither reliable nor working when it is actually needed in a time of emergency. Also, I border a national park so the networks go in and out depending on where I'm at in the county; especially with T-Mobile, Sprint, and most all MNVOs regardless of their backing network. Just saying that depending on where you live, wireless isn't a reliable, dependable option. If you live in the county you might not even get reliable 3G or wireless period.

Meanwhile, in the past 4 years, I've gone from having unlimited bandwidth to having data caps implemented. Rates raised the second time last month. From $100 to a whopping $120 a month for, according to Speedtest, 85mpbs down, 2.7 up, and 33ms ping with my 2 TB data cap. I tried 1 TB but that shit didn't work out. Overages the first month. I miss those same speeds at and no data caps at $60 a month. Local cable internet monopolies suck. Oh, that's the mid-grade plan. The premium plan is $150 and it's just a bit faster with either a 3 or 5 TB limit.

Funnily enough and on topic, I've spend the past two months doing my gaming on Windows and Epic. Been playing that THPS remake a lot and their free games once a week keep me distracted...well, sometimes...but I haven't had much of a reason to get on Steam lately and everything on Linux has just been office work and boring crap like that. Earlier today on Windows I opened up Steam to play through some backlog, decided on Black Mesa, but instead I took a nap; I did not get a survey.

[zexelon]

Perhaps it could also be that the majority of Linux users actually have Nvidia cards and the Linux community is not targeting getting this working for **insert political utopian reason here**

I dont care if Nvidia plays nice in the sandbox... they hold all the toys of performance. Yes the new AMD cards are awesome competitors to the 3000 series... but lets be honest it would take 3 or 4 generations for them to catch up to the market hold that Nvidia has... oh and ROCm would suddenly have to not suck.

Just a thought, based on all the surveys done... if you want to penetrate the desktop arena... learn to love Nvidia!

[JPFSanders]

Just a thought, based on all the surveys done... if you want to penetrate the desktop arena... learn to love Nvidia!

I would rather learn to love poisonous mushrooms than going back to Nvidia. AMD is getting competitive on the desktop fast, I game a lot and haven't needed NVidia site amdgpu came out, perhaps it will not take as long as you thing.

[Ironmask]

Perhaps it could also be that the majority of Linux users actually have Nvidia cards and the Linux community is not targeting getting this working for **insert political utopian reason here**

I dont care if Nvidia plays nice in the sandbox... they hold all the toys of performance. Yes the new AMD cards are awesome competitors to the 3000 series... but lets be honest it would take 3 or 4 generations for them to catch up to the market hold that Nvidia has... oh and ROCm would suddenly have to not suck.

Just a thought, based on all the surveys done... if you want to penetrate the desktop arena... learn to love Nvidia!

The Linux desktop is rife with usability issues to this day. "Nah dude it's nVidia they're paying off people to not use linux!"
This community definitely doesn't help it's adoption, that much is obvious.
You're not much better than GNOME considering their awful default configurations are probably what drive away the majority of potential users, but instead of listening to feedback, all they're interested in is throwing money at fruitless diversity initiatives.
So many things need to be tweaked, fixed or overhauled in Linux to get it to a state where it can challenge Windows, from the software to the ecosystem to the userbase to how it's advertised. For example, Steam Machines were a total failure because Valve didn't give anyone a good reason to own one besides "look it runs SteamOS!" which I think might have actually been a downside for a few people. You really should stop trying to sweep the ecosystem's faults under the rugs and covering them up with baseless conspiracy theories, and actually form some genuine criticisms of the ecosystem so those flaws can be made more public and properly addressed. Personally, I'm extremely vocal about linux/package managers not have a side-by-side assembly system. Package managers trying to juggle package versions and hoping no collisions occur is what has made a lot of systems unbootable in the past, and it's completely asinine Linux has a problem Windows fixed 20 years ago. Snaps and similar technology are assisting with that, but the root issue needs to be addressed.

[lyamc]

Valve made the PC a TV gaming platform, which by itself is an incredible feat. Steam machines were a commercial failure sure, but Steam got better for me