Johnathanamz: Linux barley grew in the last five years.
adamhm: It's grown quite a lot actually. Metrics taken from places other than Steam's hardware survey have shown rather more substantial growth recently.
One thing you need to know VALVe is subsidizing the ports of AAA PC versions of video games to get ported to Linux by Aspyer and Feral.
adamhm: Valve has subsidised a few, but most ports (the overwhelming majority) aren't subsidised. IIRC Aspyr and Feral actually fund their ports themselves, making their money back from sales of the ports.
Activision, Bethesda Softworks, Blizzard Entertainment, Capcom, Electronic Arts (EA), and Ubisoft have seen no interest in having their PC versions of video games ported to Linux.
adamhm: Give it time.
Also you can see on gog.com PC versions of video games that have Linux support on Steam don't have Linux support on gog.com like Dying Light, Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, Saints Row 2, Saints Row: The Third, Saints Row IV, Saints Row: Gat out of Hell, Tropic 5, etc.
adamhm: That seems to be more of a problem with GOG though. We already know that GOG did get the rights to provide the Metro games here, but for whatever reason held them back (no idea why as GOG won't say, but the Metro Redux games are known for having great quality Linux ports). GOG could - and really should - do much better.
Most PC gamers just don't want Linux, they see it's free and say oh it's free it's crap.
adamhm: Give it time
There was even a thing said that in China since Windows costs money to purchase PC gamers in China pirate the Windows Operating Systems (OS') because they can.
adamhm: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates "About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
"It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
So yeah you can believe that Linux is going to grow, but no it's never going to get 5% of the PC video games market or 10% of the PC video games market, ever.
adamhm: Maybe, maybe not. We'll see, give it time.
Most AAA PC versions of video games will never be released for sale for Linux.
adamhm: Linux is in a very similar situation to GOG, especially GOG's early days. Actually, something funny I've noticed for a while now is that in many of your posts about Linux you could swap Linux with GOG and Microsoft/Windows with Valve/Steam and it fits perfectly, or almost perfectly. Although Linux has vastly more new/new-ish AAA games getting released for it than are getting released on GOG.
Talk to me in 2020.
By then you will still see the Linux PC video games market share at either 0.xx% or at 1%.
Linux just will not grow in the PC video games market share at at 5% or 10% at all.