[merlijn_s]

Roughly 1/3 of the steam library runs on Linux. Valve continues to update SteamOS, and they are still heavily involved in creating Linux drivers and middleware. Every week new games are ported, new frameworks are released with Linux support and new Linux dev game tools are created.

SteamOS succeeded in forcing Microsoft to clear up its act, and this is the main reason for Valve's investment. Their continued investment is to continue to make sure that they have a plan B. They are doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to make the Linux gaming stack amazing. This looks "failed" from the outside because they aren't pushing the platform heavily, but it is actually a lot more beneficial that doing a big marketing push before the platform is ready.

The interesting thing with a platform like Linux is that it's not dependent on one big revenue stream to survive. Because of this, it doesn't matter if it takes years to get massive adoption because it's not burning a hole in the pocket of a company. If xbox was in the same position linux was in, you would be correct in saying that it failed, because anything less than 30% market share means gigantic losses for Microsoft which would lead to axing xbox.

PS: Atari's games run fine on Linux. Their retro emulator runs on Linux. They seem to know what they're doing.

[legohead]

Less than 1% of Steam users use linux. [1] It's a failure.

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=combined

[loup-vaillant]

Bad metric. Also: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3045249/linux/linux-gaming-i...

Valve doesn't really care how many users are running Linux right now —they still have their Windows revenue. What they do care about is how many users would switch to Linux if Valve was for some reason forced to drop Windows support altogether (like, Microsoft goes Apple on their users and mandates an app store). That number may be much higher.

You'd also have to keep in mind what's keeping users to Windows. From where I stand, exclusive titles play a big role. Linux has no exclusive title to speak of. Why would it, that market is way too small for such madness. Windows, understandably has loads. My only reason for still using Windows is a couple titles I can't bring myself to renounce.

Then there are drivers and tooling, but that's just the same kind of network effects, really.

[pjmlp]

The same amount that moved from Windows XP to GNU/Linux, because Windows gaming was doomed with DX 10 being Vista/Windows 7 only.

[cat199]

but what about anything that is > 100% of my attention span?

[pjmlp]

What forced Microsoft to clear up its act, was the feedback at GDC and similar events, nothing to do with SteamOS.

The very fact that Asus and others never really bothered that much to sell Steam Machines, shows how much market relevant it was.

[merlijn_s]

Valve's announcement that games ran faster on SteamOS had an almost immediate response:

> “A few weeks after this post went out, some very senior developers from Microsoft came by for a discrete visit. They loved our post, because it lit a fire underneath Microsoft's executives to get their act together and keep supporting Direct3D development. (Remember, at this point it was years since the last DirectX SDK release. The DirectX team was on life support.) Linux is obviously extremely influential." [1]

And again, market relevance was not required for SteamOS to succeed. Gabe Newell has been very open about the fact that SteamOS' goal was to keep Microsoft in check and have a plan B for when things go south..

[1] http://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/news/steam-s-linux-and-opengl-...

[pjmlp]

The Steam hardware/OS survey is a good indication how successful plan B would be.

[WillPostForFood]

I thought and posted something similar in another Steam/Linux thread. I was corrected by a passionate Linux user, so I'll return the favor. The Steam hardware survey will not appear for Big Picture users, which is what SteamOS will launch into by default, so it gets undercounted.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3045249/linux/linux-gaming-i...

[hood_syntax]

Are you implying people wouldn't jump to SteamOS if it met the needs of gamers? If 95% of Steam games ran on it that would be a huge thing. Lots of people don't want to run Windows 10 because of privacy issues (maybe not a huge number, but it's likely a larger portion of gaming enthusiasts fit into that group than the population at large). And is there a better value proposition than free? If it meets your needs and costs nothing, why would you pay for an equivalent product?

[Feniks]

Sure everyone would jump to an alternative of Windows.

Sadly every piece of software and hardware since win95 has been made with windows in mind and no alternative has been able to come even close to that.

[pjmlp]

You mean the same people that didn't want to use Vista and Windows 7, and would move from Windows XP into GNU/Linux?

[moepstar]

Well, i guess you do have a point there - one iteration was worse in terms of privacy than the other, yet the adoption of alternative OSs was very weak.

But they've gone a little too far with Windows 10 - for me at least, of course everyone will have their own "measure" where too much will be too much.