Linux gaming has seen an impressive rise in popularity among Steam gamers, according to Valve's latest gaming platform hardware survey.
The April 2022 hardware survey shows that the number of gamers using Linux has increased to 1,14%, which is still a modest percentage, but is up quite a bit from the previous month, when Linux was at exactly 1,0, XNUMX%.
While a 0,14% increase means very little for Windows, it's actually a huge step forward for Linux and represents the second-highest level of adoption the alternative platform has seen lately, according to figures from Valve.
What was the best month for Linux? You may be wondering. That would be November 2021, when the Steam Hardware Survey reported an adoption level of 1,16%, as reported by Gaming on Linux. Interestingly, this percentage of adoption has peaked fairly quickly since July 2021 when the Steam Deck was first announced, but since peaking the percentage has slowly decreased to 1% in March 2022.
So what's quite remarkable here is that we saw a huge increase, relatively speaking, with a jump from 1% to 1,14%, the biggest jump in recent memory in the space of just one month.
Analysis: Adoption of driving bridges, one way or another
As mentioned, while these are relatively small percentages of the overall Steam gaming landscape, this still looks like a promising big jump for Linux in April 2022. Is this a reflection of the popularity of the Steam Deck, then, helping attract players to try? the waters of Linux?
We think so, although that doesn't mean a large number of Steam Deck owners are suddenly showing up in Valve's survey. There are plenty of Steam Decks now, of course, as many as Valve can make and ship, though the actual number is unclear.
What you may not realize is that apparently Steam Deck users are only asked to participate in the Steam Hardware Survey in desktop mode (with the Steam client running), and most people will pass almost all of their time in game mode, so that probably means many Steam Deck owners don't even get a chance to take the survey.
What this current uptick in adoption over the last month probably shows is just the additional interest in Linux gaming taking place on the Steam Deck and, in particular, Valve advancing work on Proton to make it work better and be more compatible. with more Windows games.
Actually, if Steam Deck owners were fully included in the monthly hardware report, the percentage of Linux games would probably be a bit higher. And when Valve explains how the survey is implemented in the Steam Deck so that it's for everyone (not just those who are suspended in desktop mode at the right time), we could see a much larger increase (relatively speaking, let's temper expectations properly). , of course).
We can expect it to surpass last year's highest adoption rate, and perhaps fall behind it by some margin, in the near future, not only as more and more Deck owners are included in the survey, but as that more and more units of the portable ship, and Proton is continuously refined to generate additional interest (apart from the deck) that is already causing increases like the one seen in April. And while Linux will hardly challenge Windows, it may try to overtake macOS (currently at 2,55%) sooner than you think...
Today's best gaming laptop deals