14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 comes with a long list of goodies for desktop gamers, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that all of them are ready to abandon Windows 7.
And statistics provided by Valve for its gaming platform Steam shows the transition takes place rather slowly, with Windows 7 still remaining the number one desktop operating system in February with 68.50% market share.
On the other hand, Windows 7 dropped 3.06% the last month, while Windows 10, which is now the runner-up with 25.41%, improved no less than 2.71% for the 64-bit version.
Oddly enough, Windows 8.1 64-bit has also improved its Steam share by 0.13% to 2.26%, and even more awkward is that Windows XP jumped no less than 0.03% to 0.21%.
Overall, however, Windows dropped 0.07% to 98.31%, while macOS, Apple’s desktop operating system which isn’t very popular among gamers, increased 0.02% to 1.33%. Linux also posted a growth of 0.03% to 0.28%, mostly thanks to Ubuntu 17.10 64-bit and its 0.05% share.
Why Windows 7 is still number one
While it makes sense for Windows 7 to lose ground and Windows 10 to grow, it’s also worth mentioning that the current statistics are likely the result of gamers in China migrating en-masse to Steam following the release of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
Back in 2017, Windows 10 was already the leading choice on Steam, but it lost the number one spot following the release of this super-popular game, and it’s believed that it’s all been caused by Chinese gamers, many of them running Windows 7, who started using Valve’s platform as well.
This still seems to be the case these days, as Chinese is the number one language with 63.93%, followed by English at a huge distance with just 17.62%. Slowly, but surely, however, Windows 10 appears to be recovering and at some point in the future it should be able to regain the leading position as well.