[jwcooper]

This is a survey from gamers. There are a lot of games that only work on Windows, or work much better on Windows.

It's only been somewhat recently that games that support Linux have exploded in numbers. Somewhat coinciding with the release of the steam deck and the massive community it brought with it. There are now launchers for other stores for Linux and more every day.

Still, a lot of gamers don't really have a choice but to at least dual boot into Windows if they want to play some of the most popular games (Fortnite, for one).

[orbital-decay]

It's because you can run native Windows games on Linux with very few issues nowadays, not because developers started porting their games to Linux more often.

Not supported games are mostly online multiplayer ones, and are using extremely intrusive anticheat rootkits. Fortnite is a great example of that. Anticheat devs refuse to support Linux for obvious reasons (too many ways to escape the rootkit).

[freedomben]

Your both right. The answer for how you're both right is Proton. Many more game makers started testing their games on Linux in Proton/Wine/Steam to make sure they run on Steam Deck (and other Linux), but they (mostly) aren't native builds.

[wharvle]

I wonder how many gamers now run both Windows and Linux. I bet it's a high percentage of Steam Deck owners. ~100% of Steamdeck owners run Linux (they have a Steam Deck), but some proportion of those, which I'm guessing is fairly large, also has a Windows gaming rig.

[ParetoOptimal]

The steam deck effect is growing and I hope it keeps going.