this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
117 points (98.3% liked)
Linux Gaming
15802 readers
31 users here now
Gaming on the GNU/Linux operating system.
Recommended news sources:
Related chat:
Related Communities:
Please be nice to other members. Anyone not being nice will be banned. Keep it fun, respectful and just be awesome to each other.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You can't say Linux has millions of users based on steam percentages without accepting that steam has at least 100 million mau. From https://www.demandsage.com/steam-statistics/ we can take that steam has 132 million mau.
That said at 2% or even 4%. Linux isn't trending enough for a game developer to make a Linux only game and it's even hard to justify it over other platforms like consoles. Additionally from a game dev perspective, might as well just wait to see if proton works with the game. Linux native builds are on the decline and support for Linux on steam is becoming more irrelevant to developers. Game developers aren't supporting Linux and because of valve's efforts they shouldn't need to.
I'm not sure what you're trying to convince me of or why. I just explained why it's worth tracking the percentages with and without Chinese users, and why this article, as written, needs additional context. And that number 130M is over a year and a half old, by the way, like I said before.
I was just trying to explain, as you were talking about a game developer perspective, that your take is skewed and not how game developers look at Linux or Chinese players. the 130 million figure not from this year doesn't matter that it's older, it's just a rough baseline. We won't ever have exact numbers and even if we did, from a game developer perspective, you will be building a game to release in the future. So unless there are drastic trends to project, we shouldn't worry. There are no drastic trends here other than "Oh, hey, the steam deck is gaining numbers, that might be interesting." Overall doesn't matter because it's not the game developer's choice to support Steam deck or not, it's Valve with Proton as we saw with BG3.
So the game developer's perspective here, from simply a business standpoint, is to ignore Linux entirely. That said morally, I fully support Linux by making Linux native builds for all my games. That's a moral standpoint and not business so I can't expect most developers to follow suit.
It really feels like you just showed up to argue, man, because you took us so far from we started. Just look at the Steam Tracker page on GOL and take a look at English-only versus the one that shows Chinese players. That's all. The "surge" is easily explained.
You literally replied to me, I was agreeing with the original commentor and you showed up to disagree.