A new Steam Hardware Survey has been released by Valve

Aug 3, 2015 09:49 GMT  ·  By

A new Hardware Survey has been released by Valve, and it looks like the Steam for Linux decline has finally stopped. We still need a few more months to confirm this, but July seems to be the first month that doesn't register drops in user numbers.

We've been writing about this important decline in Steam for Linux users for a few months now, and each time we were hoping to see the trend reverse its course or at least stop. Well, it looks like the month of July has been a more forgiving one, and the decline of the Linux platform has finally stopped. It would be nice to see it rise again, but it's a long way back to that 1.2%.

The Steam Hardware Survey is offered every month to an unknown number of Steam users, from all supported platforms, meaning Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. It's not clear how many respond to these surveys, so the accuracy of the procedure can't be determined. The Linux desktop usage is believed to be around 1.2% globally, but it's a rough estimate and is really difficult to calculate. Some sources place it below this number, while others even go up to 2%. In any case, it's much higher than the measly 0.89% it is sitting at right now.

Steam for Linux needs a comeback

It's quite possible that the Linux users are more apprehensive about sharing their data with Valve. Numerous users have expressed their distrust of the Steam Hardware Survey, and they don't want to offer any kind of information to the company.

As it stands right now, Steam for Linux is at 0.89%, and it has registered a 0.2% increase since last month, which might mean that it's levelling off. Right now, almost 1 in 4 games have Linux support on Steam, so the lack of users can't be blamed on too few games in the library. Something other than that must be the cause of the decline.

In any case, you can check the Steam Hardware Survey for July at the link above for more details about Steam users.