On Steam, Windows 10 adoption is already ahead of Windows 8, Vista, XP, Mac, and Linux

Valve today updated its Hardware & Software Survey for August 2015, and the good market share news seen by Microsoft this past month is all the more apparent in the gaming world. Although Windows’ share overall dipped slightly on Steam, Windows 10 adoption has exploded into double digits.

In fact, although it’s only been available for over a month, Windows 10 already has more share on Steam than Windows 8, Windows Vista, and Windows XP. It is also unsurprisingly ahead of Mac OS X and Linux, neither of which gets much attention from gamers. All Windows 10 has left to conquer is Windows 8.1 (which it will easily do by the end of the year) and Windows 7 (will probably take a while longer).

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Here is the August 2015 operating system market share list for Steam:

• Windows 10: 17.02 percent
• Windows 8.1: 23.90 percent
• Windows 8: 2.88 percent
• Windows 7: 48.54 percent
• Windows Vista: 0.62 percent
• Windows XP: 2.76 percent
• Mac OS X: 3.22 percent
• Linux: 0.92 percent

Breaking down the numbers even more, here is how each operating system version fared:

Between July and August, Windows 10 jumped a huge 13.68 percentage points (from 3.34 percent to 17.02 percent). Those gains have to come from somewhere: Windows 8.1 dropped 7.68 points (from 31.58 percent to 23.90 percent), Windows 8 slipped 0.29 points (from 3.17 percent to 2.88 percent), and Windows 7 fell 5.79 points (from 54.33 percent to 48.54 percent). Meanwhile, Vista stayed flat at 0.62 percent and XP slipped 0.07 points to 2.76 percent.

On the whole, Windows still dominates Steam over 95 percent share. Nonetheless, Mac and Linux saw minor gains in August, up 0.09 points and 0.07 points respectively.

The fact Windows 7 fell so quickly under the 50 percent mark perfectly illustrates how eager gamers are to adopt the latest and greatest from Microsoft. We can’t help but wonder how many of the 75 million PCs already on Windows 10 are Steam users, but it looks to be a significant number. It would appear that gamers like free upgrades just as much as anyone else.