Valve Reveals First Month of Steam Linux Gains

An anonymous reader writes with news that Valve has updated its Hardware & Software Survey for December 2012, which reflects the first month of the platform being available for Linux. Even though the project is still in a beta test, players on Ubuntu already account for 0.8% of Steam usage. The 64-bit clients for Ubuntu 12.10 and 12.04.1 showed about double the share of the 32-bit versions. MacOS use also showed growth, rising to about 3.7%. Windows 7's usage share dropped by over 2%, but balanced by the growth of Windows 8, which is now at just under 7%. The total share for Windows is still about 95%.

Doesn't help that Steam client is poorly written

[Anonymous Coward]

At least on a Mac, I've found the client to be slow, frequently, unresponsive, and unintuitive.
Maybe Mac and Linux users just have higher standards, and won't put up with such poorly written software?

Wine

[simonbp]

I wonder how many of the "Windows" users are actually just Linux users using Wine. Despite the Beta, I still do that for games (e.g. Civ 5) that don't have a Linux version.

Re:Wine

[MoonFog]

This is what I find to the gold mine in Steam; the small, non-resource hungry, indie games. They are often far more interesting to play than the latest CoD++, and Steam makes them easy to find and play.

Beware the "Windows Users" statistics

[Morgaine]

That's a very good point made by the parent, and it has plenty of precedent outside of the Valve/Steam games space. I appear in the statistics as a "Windows User" for Guild Wars 2 (and for many years previously for Guild Wars 1), yet there hasn't been a Windows box at home for years and years. This is sure to be happening for Steam "Windows" games as well.

Wine works perfectly for gaming these days. Beware the "Windows User" statistics!

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus christ.

Steam is the DRM, but it's acceptable in it's methods. You buy the game, the game and install key are authenticated with Steam servers and once it's installed you DON'T have to be online at all times to play the game. You can back up your game install and then move those files elsewhere should you want/need to.

That, quite frankly, is the happy line that ought to exist. You prove you bought the game and then you're left alone. If you want to play online multiplayer, well.... ONLINE MULTIPLAYER.

What's the problem.

Re:Troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why I read this site any more, there are a few reasonable posters left but it seems the majority has left, leaving us with these childish dumbfuck moderators and mediocre comments.

Re:Beware the "Windows Users" statistics

[ifiwereasculptor]

It's funny because Steam knows it's being run in Wine (it checks for Wine version, look in Help -> System Information). They don't know anything about your Linux system, though, and I don't know how they use that information.

Re:DRM

[fredprado]

In most countries they can't revoke, and most countries consider this "licensing" as buying. Only in US law allows absurd contracts like this where end users end not owning games they paid for.

Re:DRM

[RCL]

No. European court allowed resale of a license (if it doesn't have a time limit), but that doesn't mean that it equated buying the license itself with purchasing a tangible item. It's intuitively understood that you cannot own a "copy" of a sequence of bytes. You can own a right to use the said sequence (e.g. execute it on your processor). Can't you see how intellectual property is different from physical one?

Re:DRM

[RCL]

I'm a game developer who happens to work in Poland and I track CD Projekt (GOG parent) stock close enough. GOG did bring them profit (a bit less than 1 mln USD for 1H2012), Wiedzmin (Witcher) for 360 got them even more (about 5 mln USD) but they are losing money on traditional retail market, their primary source of income up to now (source in Polish [pej.cz]). Also, compare those numbers, which may be good for Poland, to 40 mln USD needed to create a modern AAA game [polygon.com].

Also, DRM is essential to delay piracy for the first month of game release. Games only really sell in the first few weeks after launch, if you didn't know - after that, people move on to something else and the "long tail" of sales begins (see just about any game's charts: [1] [vgchartz.com], [2] [vgchartz.com], [3] [vgchartz.com]). So the games need to make up for that large upfront investment in first 4 to 6 weeks, if they don't break even, they are dead. Alan Wake, L.A. Noire, Max Payne 3 - all those arguably known and high profile titles are commercial failures. Most current triple A games flop or barely make even, but unless explicitly asked, publishers rarely admit it. However, if you work in gamedev you probably saw the closures of Grin, Pandemic, 38 Studios, and in general, it starts to happen too frequently [neogaf.com].

So no, it's not just about "having control". There would be no need in control if existing model provided a sustainable way to earn money. Truth is, nowadays interactive entertainment market is a gamble.

Re:DRM

[fredprado]

DRM is not essential to delay piracy, because it simply cannot accomplish it. Most AAA games are cracked and available to download even before release. Still many AAA manage to profit a lot. Especially those that are most pirated in their first weeks.

You, and nobody else up to this day, succeeded in correlating piracy with loss of income, maybe because there is no correlation at all.

Furthermore I couldn't care less about AAA games at all. AAA games come from big companies, usually follow trends and add very little innovation to the market. It can be argued that we would be much better without those companies and their games.

And all markets are gambles. You always take the risks when you enter a market. If you can't take the risk don't do it.

Steam Linux acceptance

[JWSmythe]

    They have a serious problem to real Linux acceptance. Besides all the chatter of DRM.

    Here's the numbers at the moment, for games per platform. I'm just doing this by clicking the search without any search text,then selecting Games and then the OS. No text criteria used.

    1,858 PC games
    341 Mac games
    38 Linux games.

    Right now, they show 41 Linux games on the Linux link. I don't know what the difference is, and haven't bothered to look. :)

    If my late night math is right, that gives 4,889% more games for Windows than Linux.

    When we were discussing the Steam set-top boxes a little bit back, they had just about as many Linux games.

    I love that they're embracing Linux. It would be nice if they actually had a lot of games.

    I'll install it, just so there will be more in the numbers. I don't know how much I'll play. Just like the rest of the market, if there aren't enough games that people like, it won't be viable. The set-top box will help encourage developers, if it actually ends up in homes. At least they have a budget to push for it, but all the advertising in the world doesn't give you a high volume product.