14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft made on January 21 one of the most surprising announcements in the last couple of years: Windows 10 is going to be offered free of charge within the first year after launch to all those running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 on their computers.
This news obviously took many by surprise, so it's no wonder that lots of users have actually rushed to upgrade to Windows 8.1 in order to benefit from this offer.
Living proof is a new batch of stats provided by Valve for its Steam gaming platform, which show that, in January 2015, the overall share of Windows 8.1 64-bit increased by 1.57 percent.
What's more, Windows 8.1 64-bit was the only Windows operating system that managed to increase its share on Steam last month, stats reveal, as all the other versions that are currently on the market lost between 0.01 and 0.55 percent of their users.
Windows still the top choice on Steam
Interestingly, Windows 10, which appears to be the daily driver for many users on Steam, now has a bigger gamer base than Windows XP 64-bit does, as Valve's data points to a share of 0.28 percent for the new OS.
Windows 7 64-bit obviously continues to be the top choice for those who want to play their Steam games on a PC, so its share of 46.37 percent shouldn't be too surprising for anyone.
Overall, Windows keeps leading the charts and it's hard to believe that this thing can change anytime soon. No less than 95.48 percent of the computers currently running Steam are powered by Windows, while only 3.32 percent run Mac OS X. Linux is even more behind with a share of 1.09 percent.
Windows 10 is very likely to increase its share after launch, especially because Microsoft has promised to make it the number one destination for gaming too, so expect Steam users to upgrade and take advantage of the free offer in the first days after the public debut.