this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024

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145

Valve: Windows 11 market share on Steam drops to 41.61% (www.neowin.net)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 140 points 7 months ago (3 children)

For those unfamiliar, each month, Valve randomly picks a subset of Steam users and offers them anonymous participation in the survey. ... According to Valve, in March 2024, Windows 11 went down from 41.96% to 41.61%. On the other hand, Windows 10 gained what Windows 11 lost—its market share increased from 54.19% to 54.40%.

Eesh, I dunno. Those are quite small changes and could just be a result of statistical noise, especially given the random sampling.

Not exactly headline worthy, IMO, but it must be a slow news day.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's a small change, but the trend should be decisively in the opposite direction. New Windows OSs are almost always growing in the market relative to old Windows OSs. This means Windows 11 is not popular and Windows users are avoiding it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

I'm willing to bet it's just the tpm requirement holding off growth. People aren't buying hardware just to install win 11.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

This small of a change is probably within a margin of error.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Well, the random sampling makes it less likely it's invalid. Random sampling is pretty much the standard for large groups. As for significance, that's something I'd have to read more to know whether it's high enough to truly matter. There are very well developed rules for this stuff in statistics.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Do you know what the sample size for it is? Probably in the millions i would expect. If thats the case then i dont think 0.3% is just noise, but it also doesnt really show anything of value.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I can't find anything on the sample size. It's not mentioned on the official page, and all the other results are armchair statisticians arguing about it in various forums. I'm guessing they want to keep that data close to their chest.

However, Steam's charts page shows a peak of 34M players online at once over the last few days. A few different sites suggest Daily Average Users are around 60M. Let's call it an even 50M for the sake of argument.

What would a decent sample size be without generating overwhelming amounts of data? Say, 10%? So that's surveying 5M users.

0.3% of 5M is just 15,000 users. What if the survey just happened to pick 15k fewer Windows 11 users this time? Is that so unbelievable?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah that is insanely unbelievable. Maybe a tenth of that is barely realistic but 15k of sample error would mean that valve is completely shit at selecting a good sample.

[–] jacksilver 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Even if their sample size is large, you're assuming that people who are willing to respond to the survey are evenly distributed across different OS. I wouldn't be surprised if their is a slant to this data just because it's based on an opt in survey.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

That is a good point and might be true, but statistics people deal with that kind of bias all the time and can also adjusted for it. But yeah who knows what kind of people are responsible for these surveys at valve.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Damn even with all the efforts from steam, the Linux market share is less than 2 and fairly close to mac.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Change is slow and there aren't many events that convince people to switch.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

[–] saltesc 21 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

Also most gamers either buy a PC or build and install Windows in 15 mins, install Steam, and that's requirements met for all gaming. The most frustrating part being the minute or two to setup a Windows profile, or optionally installing a software (once) to ensure latest drivers.

Everything after that short setup is, "I want to play that." click...wait for download... Done. Play now.

If you use your computer for things outside of gaming and average use, I could see the argument appealing to 98% of gamers. But so far, it's clear the stats are not "Gamers would like macOS/Linux" rather, "Some macOS/Linux users game."

[–] Delphia 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You have to figure in Steam Deck users. Id say that a small percentage of windows users are gamers, as opposed to close to 100% of Steam deck users.

I wonder if the Survey counts Steam OS as linux or its own os.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

"SteamOS Holo" 64 bit : 44.22%(+0.67%)

Per the survey site, SteamOS counts as Linux, and represents about 45% of linux users (The second most used OS is Archlinux, representing 7.6% of the users)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Windows dominance isn't surprising but I was guessing it would be more like 3 or 4% because of the steam deck but I forgot to consider that even among windows users, the gamers using steam are a small percentage so 4% of general Linux market share is expected to be lowered when it comes to steam users. But I am more surprised that macos has a similar share to Linux, I always assumed it is lower especially with steam deck around.

[–] saltesc 1 points 7 months ago

Keep in mind, 4% is 1 in 25 gamers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I agree with this. The ease of use is the biggest thing to get right.

With that being said I recently built a small form factor PC and installed chimera OS on it for my TV in the living room. It works just like the steam deck. Very low maintenance. I've been spending more time gaming on that than my actual PC. It's always up to date, ready to go and I start playing when I'm ready.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yo thats awesome that's like 1 percent higher then last year

[–] dumpsterlid 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, I don’t know if it realllyyyy matters what the numbers are on paper right now. It matters how realistic it is for the average gamer to actually be happy buying and using Linux gaming hardware… and in my opinion the Steam Deck authoritatively demonstrates that capability, even after only the first generation of devices.

The fact is, it isn’t like most gamers actually like Microsoft it’s just Mac has always been way worse with games… so gaming has developed a default preference for Windows. Microsoft has treated it as its corporate mission to destroy any brand loyalty in gamers by repeatedly shitting on gaming and just assuming the gaming industry will keep choosing to build games for windows without doing anything to actually help foster that (besides anticompetitive sketchy shit probably).

Sure on paper, Linux is still a rounding error, but change can happen very quickly when it is simply a matter of a tipping point being reached, which oh boy if you like tipping points, well the 2020s are going to be chock full of em.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I believe the 2020s are gonna be paradigm shifting. But I think numbers do matter because the only way to get people to play on Linux is have other people play on Linux first to show them it's good.

[–] dumpsterlid 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I get what you are saying, my point is that we aren’t in a time where the status quo should be assumed to continue indefinitely, the status quo is entirely unsustainable so we know changes are going to happen we just don’t know what they will be.

Microsoft could lose its foothold on pc gaming in a blink of an eye and totally lose the pc gaming market. It is only a couple of wrong steps away from potentially triggering that, all Linux has to do is keep getting more polished and keep presenting a more attractive alternative. The sea of change will happen and it will happen so fast it will make our heads spin, it’s just a matter of the right trigger events.

I mean, I don’t even think Microsoft gives a shit about Windows anymore as an actual operating system (rather than a surveillance device), I don’t think it would be impossible for Microsoft to decide to shift over to a modified Linux based OS and ditch Windows entirely.

Ideally for Microsoft they would buy Steam and the Steam Deck so they didn’t have to do any work, but oh my that would be an awful timeline.

My point is, be patient and take heart, change is coming.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I agree, other than the sea of change happening quickly I see it as a long grueling process of denial then some sort of retaliation and finally ends with adoption

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

There is a lot of inertia behind windows both in market share and user knowledge that will take a lot to get over. For example a bug part of why I stay on windows is because I'm simply a lot better at using it than Linux so troubleshooting is easier and quicker. Plus I haven't found a distro yet that feels as idiot proof as windows as macos can be.