According to these new numbers from Valve, the Linux customer base is up to 1.96%, or a 0.52% jump over June! That’s a huge jump with normally just moving 0.1% or so in either direction most months… It’s also near an all-time high on a percentage basis going back to the early days of Steam on Linux when it had around a 2% marketshare but at that time the Steam customer size in absolute numbers was much smaller a decade ago than it is now. So if the percentage numbers are accurate, this is likely the largest in absolute terms that the Linux gaming marketshare has ever been.

Data from Valve: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?platform=combined

    • @floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      31•1 year ago

      It does, but as a result we can now set up Linux on other machines and play a huge range of games. This removes one of the main obstacles for many people with Linux.

    • @NightOwl@lemmy.oneEnglish
      17•1 year ago

      Love the Deck. I actually finish games with retro or pixel art aesthics with the deck compared to my PC or consoles. The pick up and go aspect and the smaller screen helps me keep coming back to it instead of abandoning it.

    • CethinEnglish
      12•1 year ago

      The deck has a lot to do with it whether people are playing on it or not. It’s the thing that’s made them make the big push into supporting games on Linux, which applies to other distros than just the Steam one.

      • @erwan@lemmy.ml
        11•1 year ago

        It also pushes developers to ensure their games run on Linux, even if it’s through Proton

        • @Holzkohlen@feddit.de
          3•1 year ago

          You have to glad when they don’t implement their own crappy launcher nowadays. Looking at you Bioshock Remastered! (btw, you can skip it via the launch options)

    • AnonymousLlama
      6•1 year ago

      Yeah that’s what I’m thinking. Great that Linux is getting more representation overall though. Wonder how anti-cheat implementations work nowadays, I remember them not being supported on Linux before, so games didn’t run.

      • @ghostinthessh@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        7•1 year ago

        Actually the common anti cheat solutions provided Linux support for a while, but the developers/publishers have been choosing not to enable it.