It finally happened. Linux gamers on Steam as of the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for October 2025 have crossed over the elusive 3% mark.

Free Windows 10 support ended for most people this past month, and the trend line of Linux usage has been quite clear leading up to this, as people prepared for the inevitable. An increase in Linux usage is also correlated to a drop in Chinese players, which did happen this month a little bit, but Linux usage is also trending up when filtering for English only. It’s worth noting that for all the official support Macs ever saw in gaming, they never represented anything better than about 5% of the market.

  • nasi_goreng@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    4 days ago

    What makes the chart “only” on 3% is Chinese users. English Linux user alone has more than 6% percentage of Linux users.

    We need Chinese government for their independent tech stack to include Linux further. At the moment, there are already several Chinese distro with big companies porting their basic apps to Linux (like chat app, office app, etc).

    If Chinese gov force gaming company to support Linux as well, we will see a huge surge evenmore. There are a huge number of Chinese game that never made out of China, and exclusive to PC only.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      4 days ago

      Here’s a graphic showing that from this page:

      I wish there was a graphic that showed English users with SteamOS separated from non-SteamOS users, because I think if we get 5% of non-SteamOS users, we should start to see devs pay a lot more attention. We’re starting to see devs make SteamOS-specific versions (e.g. THPS 1&2 offline mode), so the next step is getting Linux-specific adjustments for more games.

      • edgemaster72@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        So uh, what happened between March and September 2021 that caused the current upward trend? Was the Windows 11 announcement that poorly received?

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          Yes, and 2021 was a perfect storm of a bunch of stuff:

          • Windows 11 would break compatibility with older processors
          • Steam Deck announced preorders in July - wouldn’t release until 2022, but there was a lot of excitement about Linux gaming
          • LTT made a video series (part 1 was Nov. 2021) where Linus used Linux exclusively for a month

          So yeah, a lot of people were curious at the time, and while not all of it was directly related to Windows 11, that certainly was a factor.

      • nialv7@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        So 93% of the Linux users use English steam. I wonder how much of that is because Linux users just don’t bother to set system language (I am one of them), or maybe the language was not detected correctly.