It finally happened. Linux gamers on Steam as of the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for October 2025 have crossed over the elusive 3% mark.

Free Windows 10 support ended for most people this past month, and the trend line of Linux usage has been quite clear leading up to this, as people prepared for the inevitable. An increase in Linux usage is also correlated to a drop in Chinese players, which did happen this month a little bit, but Linux usage is also trending up when filtering for English only. It’s worth noting that for all the official support Macs ever saw in gaming, they never represented anything better than about 5% of the market.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    15 hours ago

    which you can do with a launch parameter

    My point is they built functionality specifically for a Linux-based system. In THPS, that meant offline mode, but for other games it could be anti-cheat, where to store game saves, or default settings (I think Cyberpunk some?).

    My point is that Linux is getting on the radar of game devs, and that’ll increase a lot at some level of adoption. I think that level is 5% on desktop Linux.

    Baldur’s Gate 3 is a unicorn in a lot of ways, so that’s not exactly what I’m talking about, but it’s related. I’m not going to expect BG3-level of support from devs, THPS 1&2 would be so much more than we’re currently getting.

    • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      15 hours ago

      It’s possible, but it’s also possible that they already had that offline segregation built into the code to support the Switch version, and that it was trivial to enable.