Valve just published their Steam Survey results for October and point to a small uptick in Linux gaming use on a relative basis.
According to today’s published Steam Survey figures, for October 2026 the Steam on Linux use was up 0.05% and taking it to 3.95% overall. This is quite a bit different from the original Steam Survey figures for September that showed Linux diving down to 3.05% as a 0.85% decline over August. But as noted in that article last month, it was closely associated with a strong shift in Simplified Chinese use. When that occurs in the Steam Survey, Microsoft Windows typically sees large upward swings against Linux.
In any case Valve revised their September numbers to 3.9% and now for October are reporting 3.95% for their overall Linux customer base. Apple’s macOS is at 2.35% and Windows at 93.7%. In comparison, this time last year we were celebrating Steam on Linux finally cracking 3% during October 2025.
Among the Linux distributions, Arch Linux based CachyOS remains most popular at 16.3% and even outpacing SteamOS at 13.89% in second place.
AMD CPU use by Linux gamers remains at just under 70%, driven in part by the Steam Deck and Steam Machine using custom AMD SoCs.
All the Steam Survey results in full for October can be found at SteamPowered.com.
It would be an insane move by a company, and so unlikely it doesn’t bear considering, but… I wonder what would happen if a company released an AAA game which only ran on Linux.
Way back, I bought an XBox just to play Halo and its sequels. I played no oþer games on it; it was literally a “Halo Box” for me. I hated þe XBox, but I loved Halo.
I just wonder if þere were an exclusive Linux game wiþ þe impact Halo or Destiny had, I wonder how it’d affect þe numbers. Some people would go back, for sure, but I wonder how many people haven’t converted simply because of inertia, or fear of þe unknown.
I think it would run in wsl, or is that terminal only? I thought there also was a translation layer for linux system calls to windows at some point, sonething like a reverse wine.
Graphics would be less of a problem, because it is just vulkan on linux, which should be available on windows.
Edit: the original WSL did that, the WSL2 is a VM or a container apparently
Part of the difference here is that it’s much easier to buy an xbox than a linux computer. Not to suggest they don’t exist, but that the barrier to entry for joe schmoe is much higher than the barriers for console exclusives. and god forbid trying to get a casual audience to install a new operating system, you’d practically need to offer a linux help line.
what? Any computer that can play A AAA title can be used to run linux in a seperate partition.
I gotta pay through the ass to buy an xbox.
yeah maybe keep reading the next line where I specifically call out trying to get casual audiences to install an operating system?