Linux Hit a New All-Time High for Steam Market Share in December (phoronix.com)
- Reference: 0180565722
- News link: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/01/12/0411249/linux-hit-a-new-all-time-high-for-steam-market-share-in-december
- Source link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-December-2025-Revised
But December brought a surprise, [4]reports Phoronix :
> Back on the 1st Valve published the Steam Survey results for December 2025 and they put the Linux gaming marketshare at 3.19%, a 0.01% dip from November. But now the December results have been revised... [and] [5]put the Linux marketshare at 3.58% , a 0.38% increase over November. Valve didn't publish any explanation for the revision but occasionally they do put out monthly revised data. This is easily an all-time high... both in percentage terms and surely in absolute terms too.
[1] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/01/05/0251206/steam-on-linux-ends-2024-with-small-marketshare-boost-amd-linux-cpu-use-near-74
[2] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/06/02/2124213/linux-user-share-hits-a-multi-year-high-on-steam-for-may-2025
[3] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/12/02/0525221/steam-on-linux-hits-an-all-time-high-in-november
[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-December-2025-Revised
[5] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
What this actually shows (Score:4, Informative)
Is feasibility. If 3.6% of steam users (130M total, hence 4.7M on Linux) find gaming on Linux feasible, then it is. With the recent crap that Microsoft is pulling all over the place, even people that were too lazy (like me) are seriously considering moving gaming over. And all other things (like Office, Teams, etc.) are less demanding on the platform. I expect a landslide to something like 20% at some time and then this will not go away anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
This fails to at all address the idea of what games those linux users are playing. If the linux users are playing casual games and/or 10-year-old AAA games, it does nothing to validate linux as a viable gaming platform.
Re: What this actually shows (Score:2)
All kinds of games, including just released AAA games. The only ones that don't work are a handful of multi-player games that use highly intrusive kernel level anti-cheat (mostly the anti-cheat works on Linux, the developers just refuse to support it). Think CoD, Battlefield, League of Legends. Everything else? Works great, sometimes better than Windows. About the only thing not well supported is HDR, but that's improved a lot too.
Re:What this actually shows (Score:4, Insightful)
The mix of games that users are playing matters less than the percentage. If hypothetically 95% of users used a platform, but that platform 'only' did casual games and/or 10-year-old AAA games, then the gaming ecosystem is defined by those games you are being dismissive of.
To the extent your sentiment applies, the percentage will dictate the viability. It has proven to be technically capable, with improved performance for AMD GPU systems compared to Windows, and while it lags today for nVidia, there's been analagous work that suggests the improvements that would put nVidia in the same boat. The lack of 'native' editions is now a matter of relative popularity, rather than technical implementation concerns.
Even that all said, looking through the general 'top seller' list without regard to Linux, I'm struck by the fact that most of those are over 10 years old already. But trying to filter by games released in the last 3 years, the list is:
* ARC Raiders - Not native linux, but reported to work fantastic with 'Steam Play' (AKA Proton, Valve's packaging of wine)
* Marvel Rivals - Same as above, strong compatibility through Proton.
* StarRupture - Same
* Dead Island 2 - same
* Battlefield 6 - Finally, a recent unplayable game, thanks to windows rootkit requirement
* Fallout 76 - Back to playable under Linux
* GTA V Enhanced - Playable under linux, *technically* newer edition of older game
* NBA 2k26 - Playable with proton
* Apex legends - Similar to Battlefield 6, technically can work but blocked by draconian anti-cheat
* Path of Exile 2 - Playable with Proton
So there's a top 10 of 'new/popular games today that released 2020 or later' (six games skipped because they were 'too old' by your metric) and only 2 don't work and that's because the respective publishers explicitly block Linux due to anti-cheat concerns. I suppose you have a *partial* point that every last one of those use Proton to work rather than having native ports, and the native port catalog is a bit more anemic, but the point stands that even running with Windows binary compatibility mechanism, it still can outperform Windows at playing their own games.
Re: (Score:2)
Most popular non-Valve games on Steam ARE 10-year-old titles, but there are no technical reasons all these games can't run on Linux, it just depends on the publisher. Based on the top games:
Counterstrike 2 - Yes, runs natively on Linux
DOTA2 - Yes, runs natively on Linux
PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS - will not run on linux.
ARC Raiders from Embark Studios has released today and even though it has anti-cheat, it still appears to run just fine on Desktop Linux.
Apex Legends - It used to run on Linux, but EA is actively bl
Re: (Score:2)
As long at the linux population is playing 10-year-old games...game developers arent gonna invest serious effort into it.
Re: (Score:3)
I am still playing Colossal Cave (Adventure) you insensitive clod!
Re: (Score:2)
> This fails to at all address the idea of what games those linux users are playing. If the linux users are playing casual games and/or 10-year-old AAA games, it does nothing to validate linux as a viable gaming platform.
There's only a handful of games Linux won't run, the vast majority run on Linux just fine with Proton.
The ones that don't are the multiplayer games that require kernel anti-cheat, so those games that have huge player bases (think Call of Duty and Fortnite).
But other games that don't fall in t
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the game publishers are shooting themselves in the foot as usual. Relying on kernel-level anti-cheat (basically a rootkit) to run the program is ridiculous. Garbage like Denuevo will go on my computers over my rotting corpse.
Re: (Score:2)
Denuvo is DRM not an anti-cheat, really those kernel level anti-cheats should only be found on competitive multiplayer titles which unfortunately is somewhat required and that's one more the fault of the player-base who wants to cheat than the studios who have to fight against cheaters to keep their games viable.
Re: (Score:2)
It has always been feasible but most of that market share is Steam Deck where the OS, controllers, screen, audio, GPU are all tested and performance tuned. I bet the experience for regular Linux on some random dist, desktop, X11/wayland, GPU, open/proprietary driver could be extremely variable from flawless to janky, crashy slideshows. Getting GPU drivers to work in Linux is still painful sometimes. Valve do seem to have done a good job of making containerized runtimes for games that haven't received native
It's Gonna Get Bigger (Score:2)
It's going up another 0.0000001 this year when I kick Windows to the curb.
Advertising, Recall, dark patterns? No thank you. It's my computer, not yours.
Kids home from school (Score:2)
Bored out of their skulls. "Maybe I'll try to run that linux thing on dad's old laptop and see if I can play CoD on it"
There's been an uptick every December for the past few years, and usually sinks again in January.
Re: (Score:2)
don't think so.
Steam Linux OS Share (Hardware & Software Survey)
Dec 2022: ~1.38%
Dec 2023: ~1.97%
Dec 2024: ~2.29%
Jan 2025: ~2.06%
Feb 2025: ~1.45%
Mar 2025: ~2.33%
Apr 2025: ~2.27%
May 2025: ~2.69%
Jun 2025: ~2.57%
Jul 2025: ~2.89%
Aug 2025: ~2.64%
Sep 2025: ~2.68%
Oct 2025: ~3.05%
Nov 2025: ~3.20%
Dec 2025: ~3.19%
Note: Linux does not increase every December. Some years show a December uptick, others are flat or slightly down versus November.
Generally upward trend except Feb 2025 for some reaso
Re: (Score:2)
> This is easily an all-time high... both in percentage terms and surely in absolute terms too.
Regardless, the trend is upward, and for good reason.
Re: (Score:2)
> Regardless, the trend is upward, and for good reason.
While Steam Decks keep selling, the number will keep increasing. Just saying.
2026 (Score:1)
Finally the year of the Linux desktop is here and Netcraft? Valve confirms it. In run Debian KDE btw.
Re: (Score:1)
> Finally the year of the Linux desktop is here and Netcraft? Valve confirms it. In run Debian KDE btw.
Based on the last 20 years of bitching, fucker better be running in a Beowulf cluster with KDE, GNOME, vi, EMACS, WINE, and dual-boot with BSD.
Re: (Score:2)
3.58% and they are crowing? A couple of weeks ago, there were people calling IPv6 a failure b'cos it was a "mere" 49% of all internet traffic
I think whenever Steam succeeds in getting most of its current games running on SteamOS, it'll be worth seeing how much that percentage grows. Oh, also whether it is just SteamOS on x86, or on Arm as well