Linux shoots back up the Steam Survey for March 2025 with Simplified Chinese dropping
Linux shoots back up the Steam Survey for March 2025 with Simplified Chinese dropping
I did my part, I declined the survey because I was temporarily on a Windows partition when it asked.
I was on my Windows disk temporarily and still accepted. Felt bad afterwards, but also I wanted game devs to know there are still people using 6 core CPUs lol
In the past I've counted for both Linux and Mac OS though. I'm chaotic
as expected with the Simplified Chinese language dropping the Linux stats have shot back up.
Am I an idiot? I don't understand what this means. Why would they drop Chinese from their languages? And why would dropping Chinese make people switch to Linux?
I think it is because it is not total number of Linux users, but the proportional number of Linux users compared to windows and Mac users. So the group of users who use the Simplified Chinese language must have had a lot more windows users in comparison to Linux users, and when it was dropped the proportion of Linux users rose even though the total users went down.
That's basically it. The part I don't understand is why Chinese would gravitate towards Windows while their government sees it as a US intelligence tool. I hear that most of them pirate it too.
Maybe the Steam Deck isn't readily available on the Chinese market.
Mac went up almost the same amount, too. If I’m reading the article correctly.
There was a sudden unexplained jump in the number of simplified Chinese users counted in the previous survey, few of whom run linux apparently. It was probably some kind of error because their number has now gone back down. People expected it because that's not the first time it happened.
Could it be correlated to Chinese New Year? I could see a ton of people in China suddenly playing and then not playing if most people get time off at the same time.
Does it happen every year around this time?
Alternative perspective, it could be related to the Great Firewall of a China, perhaps they made some rule adjustments and data came through that doesn't normally come through.
They don't drop Chinese from the random sampling. The random sampling is back to normal averages.See here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/#languagesanchor Also, English only Linux use is relatively the same based on the random sampling, see here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/#engsplitanchor
I read it as "dropping" as in "being released" .
Edit: English is funny sometimes
"We dropped a new update and the player base dropped so we decided to drop the whole thing and revert to the last drop."
It’s dropping as in “experiencing a fall in numbers” (back to normal levels) not as in “removing from support” nor as in “delivered to the world”
They may have removed it from the reporting or corrected for some previous change in reporting methodology.
Is this some coded way of saying less Chinese users? What does simplified Chinese dropping even mean?
I was puzzled by this too, so I took one for the team and clicked the link. Yes it does appear to mean that there were less users using the Chinese language in this survey than the one for the previous month, which implies fewer Chinese users: "Last month we saw quite a sharp drop for the Linux stats, which coincided with Simplified Chinese once again rising as the language choice on Steam. This is something that happens now and then."
Why there is a link between Chinese users and Windows is an interesting question. Could be related to a higher number of Internet cafés there - not sure if that's still true but it used to be - and/or greater acceptability and availability of pirated software in China compared to Europe and USA causing reduced demand for free alternatives.
Seems you got more out of the horrible link than me :) It is bad.
Having been to many a Chinese Internet cafe 网吧 in China and Japan, they have all run windows. I think steam keeps getting blocked or something by the gov as well. You’re right that piracy is very commonplace in China too. I bet it’s a decrease on steam use not windows.
Still, what a weird way to say less Chinese users. Also simplified Chinese is a written language, why don’t they just say mainland Chinese?
The only thing stopping me from migrating is 90% of my Steam library isn't available on Linux. I'm stuck on Windows for my main
Edit: Thank you everyone! Last time I checked was about 6 months ago, I didn't give Proton a proper shot and I will be glad to migrate fully!
How is that much of your library not functional? I have a library of 4200 games (some from family library) and over 90% are just fine thanks to proton.
How is that much of your library not functional?
I assume they're like a lot of people that only play competitive multiplayer games that don't have support for Linux for whatever reason. Or they're using a Nvidia GPU.
I didn't use Proton, there's the difference. Most games didn't have a download option. I felt a compatibility module wouldn't offer nearly as good performance/efficiency as a game designed to run on Linux/ext4 - but are you saying that playing via Proton is fine?
Have you tried using proton yet? I know it's not the same as games them native, but the compatibility list is growing pretty quick, it's probably better than 10%.
Unless 90% of your games use kernel ac, I don't really know what kind of games you're playing
What games do you have? Most of my games work great with steams proton. Only some multiplayer games with some anticheat are not supported. I think from my ~260 Games +90% are working Check out protondb.com
It’s truly a non-issue, unless we’re talking competitive multiplayer games. The only single player game I can think of that I’ve had Linux-related problems with since I switched my desktop over a couple years ago has been the new Indiana Jones game, and that was patched within a week of launch. Proton makes it brain-dead easy. I have a pretty big library and not many games have official support, but they just work with Proton. I don’t do any tinkering with custom proton builds or anything either. On a fresh Steam install, you have to go into settings once to enable Proton in games that haven’t been tested with it, but then you just forget about it and play like you would on Windows.
Thank you! I'll give it a proper shot, including enabling that setting. So good to know :)
Have you checked recently? I like to use ProtonDB. Unless you only play games with kernel-level anti-cheat, most of your games should run fine with Steam's built-in Proton compatibility tool. I rarely find a game I cannot play.
This is only true if you only play games with anti cheat at the kernel level
That seems high. I've got >500 games on steam and I know for sure I've got well over 10% that will work.
Then just use Windows. Right tool for the right job.
Sure, if the "job" is spying and the "tool" is the user.
