The latest Steam Hardware Survey is out, and while for the most part, it’s business as usual, one thing really caught my eye. The proportion of Steam users running Windows 7 64-bit jumped by a massive 6% during September 2017 alone, while Windows 10 64-bit dropped 4.66%.

Windows 10 is still the dominant operating system with 45.37% market share among Steam users surveyed, while Windows 7 currently sits at 41.01%. It’s a huge uplift from the Windows 7 though, and the biggest shift in OS usage on Steam since shortly after Windows 10’s 2015 launch.

Now before you start jumping to conclusions, there is both a number of caveats and reasons why this change has taken place. Firstly, the Steam Hardware Survey isn’t an exact science and there is a margin for error, depending upon who opts in. The results also depend solely on the Steam users and aren’t representative of the overall market.

As for the reasons, this isn’t just a simple case of Windows 10 users abandoning Microsoft’s latest operating system in droves. There’s been no major opt-out solution that could have spurred this change. Instead, it’s far more likely that the number of Steam users has just exponentially increased during the past month. The influx of users is predominantly using older operating systems, and possibly lower-end systems.

The reason behind all this? Look no further than PUBG’s explosion in popularity in China. The proportion of Chinese language users on Steam jumped from 20.8% to 30.55% within September alone. The lifting of the gaming ban in China is really beginning to take effect, and they’re finding PC to be a great home for gaming. Almost a third of Steam users (based on these estimates) are Chinese speakers.



It's a really interesting shift for Steam, and an example of the dramatic impact PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds popularity is having on PC gaming. This is an entirely new market for Valve, although it's treading heavily on the toes of TenCent's WeGame, which is also heavily state-backed. Should Steam begin to eat into WeGame's success, some sort of backlash could be on the cards.

From the perspective of us, the end user, it's easy to envisage many more games coming to Steam specifically engineered towards the Chinese market, or indeed made in China.