Steam on Linux use in March hit an all-time high of around 5.33% marketshare. Since then it pulled back to around 4% while for September 2026 the Steam Survey results are now in and it’s clocking in just above 3%.
The Steam Survey results for September that were published this evening indicate a rather steep decline of 0.85%, down to 3.05%. Meanwhile macOS is at 1.92% and Microsoft Windows at 95%.
As with most months where Steam Survey indicates an abnormally large decline for Linux use, the second stop is checking on the language use… Once again a case of a big spike in Simplified Chinese use. Steam’s Survey reports a 7.42% increase in Chinese use, up to 31.39% overall of the Steam population. Usually with those large month-over-month swings where Steam China use shoots up dramatically is a boost to Windows and a detriment to Linux. Some attribute the large increases in Simplified Chinese use to being a reporting/sampling issue.
When diving into the Steam Linux data exclusively, CachyOS has spiked by another 2.65% to now account for 18.12% of the sampled Linux gaming population. That even outperforms SteamOS Holo coming in at 17.37%.
Among Linux gamers on Steam, AMD CPUs still account for the high 60 percentage space thanks to the Steam Deck and Steam Machine using AMD APUs and their open-source/Linux support being popular with enthusiasts.
Those wanting to dive in to all the Steam Survey stats for September can find the fresh data on SteamPowered.com.
I can’t really see the data on mobile (or can’t find it anyway), but does Valve really only show %s? It’s easier to see changes if we have raw numbers, as percentages have the problem you describe.
We don’t get raw numbers because the survey is only collected from a random sample and from that portion only a fraction consent to having their info collected. The raw numbers wouldn’t tell you much more beyond the percentages.
That’s only true if the sample is capped, like they stop sampling at X number of submissions. Given the automated nature of their hardware survey, I’m not sure why they’d do that. I’ve gotten that survey several times, so it’s probably a huge, uncapped sample or I’m very lucky(?). You’re right that if it’s capped, though, it’d be no different from percentages.
As for the fraction not consenting, attrition should be roughly the same month to month (although the attrition certainly is non-random by OS and region). In other words, it biases a snapshot, but you wouldn’t expect those biases to change over time unless there’s a reason like politics changing over the year.
they don’t tell us raw numbers, I don’t think they want us to know how many Steam users there are
I think this is the best we can do with the numbers that Valve gives us https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
Well it seems like the Steam Survey is not really representative, or it is influenced by other unknown factors.
It’s highly correlated with people taking steam deck on vacation.
September means school, school means butts in front of the home computer.
We’ll see a bump in November for thanksgiving, then December/jan for Christmas break, then back to the numbers until March.
When I was dual booting, I only ever got the surveys on Windows and never on Linux. Now I’m 1-1.5 years exclusively on Linux and only got a single survey on that time frame. Also in the past they were quite often, when I was on vacation and only on my laptop instead of my gaming PC.
It was a cold day in Antarctica.
