The Linux platform is now a gaming platform

Oct 12, 2015 09:30 GMT  ·  By

Valve provides some pretty interesting statistics for the Steam usage, including the most played gaming titles. This is interesting because the top five games that are played right now on Steam have full Linux support.

It would have been difficult to imagine just a few years ago that Steam would be a prime platform for Linux gaming, but that is what's happening right now. Sure, there is also GOG.com in play, and they provide a great Linux experience, although they are still working on making it more user-friendly. The fact that five of the most played games on Steam have Linux support is a great achievement, especially if we put things into perspective.

There are usually between 5.3 million and 10.5 million users at any given time on Steam. As a matter of fact, the peak registered 10,529,877 users, but that is usually a number that continues to increase from month to month. According to the Steam Hardware Survey, Linux users take about 1% of that slice, and that means that at any given time there are between 50,000 and 100,000 Linux players on Steam, and that is factors greater than what we had just three years ago.

What are the most played games on Steam?

The fifth place is occupied by Sid Meier's Civilization V, which is not actually all that surprising. This game has been lingering in the list for a long time, and it looks like it's still going strong, despite the fact that a new one is already available.

ARK: Survival Evolved is on the forth position, and it's just the latest online survival game craze. It's still under development, and you get to ride dinosaurs, so what's not to like.

The online FPS Team Fortress 2 developed by Valve holds the third place. This is a free-to-play game, but that doesn't seem to deter people from enjoying it, but that's probably because it's not your average F2P.

In the second place we find Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but who’s going to be surprised by that? It didn't get a warm reception when it first arrived, but now it looks like everyone is playing it.

Dota 2 is in the first place, and it's also the game that's being showcased by Valve with Vulkan support, the replacement and spiritual successor of the current OpenGL.