Valve data shows Windows 10 is the leader in gaming

Sep 3, 2018 08:04 GMT  ·  By

Windows 10 might be trailing behind Windows 7 in terms of global market share, but as far as the gaming industry goes, Microsoft’s most recent desktop platform is already the dominant leader.

The latest batch of data published by Valve for its Steam gaming platform shows that Windows 10 adoption continues to improve and last month it reached 60.62 percent. In other words, six in ten Valve gamers run Windows 10 on their PCs.

Windows 10’s 6.22 percent share bump last month comes at a time when Windows as a whole declined 0.33 percent, mostly because of a major drop experienced by the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

While most users leaving Windows 7 typically upgrade to Windows 10, a trend that has been observed particularly in the gaming business, it looks like this hasn’t necessarily happened last month. Windows 7 64-bit is now powering 29.17 percent of the computers where Steam is installed.

Mac and Linux

Leaving these two versions aside, the rest of the Windows base is far behind, with Windows 8.1 64-bit ranked third thanks to a share of just 3.90 percent. Yet, this particular OS version is up 0.31 percent from the month before.

Windows is now running on 96.44 percent of the Steam systems, while Apple’s macOS is the runner-up with 2.87 percent. Apple’s platform scored an increase of 0.21 percent last month, mostly thanks to macOS 10.13.6, which itself grew by 0.97 percent.

Linux is third with 0.59 percent share on Steam, up 0.10 percent from the previous month, but still not representing an important alternative to those who play games on PCs.

No less than 38.79 percent of the Steam users play games on PCs with 8GB RAM, while 37.85 percent of them have at least 12GB or even more. Only 11.07 percent run the gaming platform on a PC equipped with 4GB RAM.