From my experience there’s this weird subset of people who don’t like newer Windows versions, which is fair enough, but instead of learning to modify those or learning Linux, they believe they can turn back time, which isn’t something you can just do when connecting it to the ever forward-marching internet.
I don’t know how Windows games are counted when they are executed in a Linux environment but I do know that Windows games executed on macOS through GPTK are counted as Windows environment, which is dumb.
Anyway, good to see Linux holding strong. I’ve been waiting for this since Hardy Heron
The steam survey doesn’t count individual games; the Steam client itself collects and sends the data after prompting the user for permission. So all the matters is the OS visible to the Steam Client.
Which is, in that case, Windows 10 in a Wine bottle.
Steam.app can’t run Windows games directly on macOS, like it does on Linux with Proton. So you have to install the Windows version of Steam in a Wine bottle to be able to install and run Windows games from Steam on macOS
It’s sounds snarky but the reality is not much will change from software and hardware developers until it reaches that level. Right now the direct support we get is from developers that just happen to like Linux. After around 10% most other developers can no longer afford to ignore that market even if they aren’t adept or comfortable with it.
It’s interesting how fragmented the Linux user base is in the survey. Excluding steam deck from the equation, the visible versions of Ubuntu are getting roughly 18.6%, Arch is getting like 14% of the desktop and Mint 21.3 getting 8.5%. The Flatpak version does put confusion into the data (hiding 11% of desktop versions) and the missing “other” 22.94% group accounts for 39% of the desktops so there may be lots of other version fragments hidden away, but regardless no single distro version seem to dominate.
Awesome stuff, a consistent percentage is what we want. Sadly, I don’t think we’ll see developers flocking to Linux as they did when Macs had a similar percentage.
I think we‘re in a very different situation right now. Proton has become so good that it‘s just not necessary for most developers to do anything to get their game running on Linux. When Macs peaked in the hardware survey, the compatibility tools were far less powerful and developers had to actually invest time and resources, if they wanted their game running on Mac.
I also think that the Steam Deck is absolutely being recognized by many developers. Even big publishers proudly announce their games being playable on it. And having games optimized for Deck often improves them on Linux in general.
So I really wouldn’t worry about developers not specifically targeting Linux. Even without that, gaming on Linux is in the best spot it has ever been and is steadily improving.
honestly, linux native games often run worse than windows binaries through proton and dxvk. game developers really only need to get the anti cheat working, if there is any and fix potential issues.
Anti cheat is not a technically issue, it is a busniss decision
Also kernel level anti cheat is idiotic. but if people accept it, then it is on them. why anyone would accept a fucking snake into their bed just to play call duty of duty tho
Had that happen to me with Last Epoch. At launch the native linux version had graphical issues where as proton ran the windows version almost perfectly.
YSK that Steam counts Macs running Windows games through Game Porting ToolKit as Windows machines.
Game developers will do the bare minimum. IMO they won’t bother with a native Linux build if their games run good enough through Proton, at least for the time being.
Linux needs to get more market share, like way more, to move things unfortunately. I know the feeling very well. It was the case on Mac when Bootcamp was still a thing, even though macOS had great OpenGL support.