Steam Hardware

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Deck: Does anyone have an idea or way of estimating how many Steam Deck are in use? (Speculation) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 hours ago by thingsiplay@lemmy.ml to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The title says it all, but I don't want to have an empty body. There are no official statement for recent Steam Decks sold, that are Steam account activated and in active use. I'm not really interested into how many are sold (although I suspect that most in the wild are also in use for gaming).

In example I've read in the past that the military of a certain country (don't want name it, so we avoid triggering political topics) purchased and used Steam Decks for a mobile platform as a general purpose computer, rather than Steam. Use cases like these should be in the minority, but interesting nonetheless.

Maybe the Steam Hardware survey or Linux only stats is a good way of estimating?

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[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

In the Steam hardware survey, under Video Card Description, you can find: Steam Deck GPU - 0.45%.

Random sources online for which I cannot find a source (though I didn't really look much) say Steam has 132 million monthly active users.

If we take both of those figures at face value, assume being a monthly active user on Steam is a good proxy for "in use", then that makes 594,000 Steam Decks in active use.

This is far less than the sales figure that @breadsmasher@lemmy.world cited, which could be a combination of a lot of factors:

Steam Decks which have been sold but are not in active use for whatever reason.
The monthly active users figure for Steam seems low to me for a platform as big as Steam. It could be wrong.
It is possible that Steam Deck users are under-represented in the Steam Hardware Survey, and they make up a bigger percentage of Steam users. Maybe they are less likely to participate in it?
People might be using Steam Deck for other purposes besides Steam, so they are not active Steam users. Personally I doubt this is a significant factor.
Some users might participate in the hardware survey more than once, causing the calculation to be wrong. I'm not sure how the hardware survey works, but this could be a huge factor.
Who know what else I didn't think of.

[–] ericwdhs@discuss.online 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

I have a Steam Deck I would consider to be in active use, but it's a secondary system for me, and the times I'm using it most heavily are done without Internet. I don't believe it's ever been counted in a survey, and I imagine there's a bunch of users in the same situation.

The same kind of thing used to happen with VR headsets before they switched it to counting any headset used in the last 30 days (determined by whether the driver was launched). I always used to get the survey when mine wasn't plugged in, and it always annoyed me to not be counted in the VR userbase. Lol.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

For the survey it does not matter how often you use it or how you use it, with or without internet. If you got the survey and accepted to send the data to Valve, then you are counted in that month. Otherwise not.

[–] ericwdhs@discuss.online 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

As I understand it, the survey flags a random sampling of logged in Steam user accounts to run the survey on each month. For each selected user, the survey prompt then pops up the next time they're online on the device they're online with as an offline device can't receive the survey notice.

Let's say I game with my desktop 20 times per month and my Deck 10 times per month, but I'm only actually connecting it to the Internet 2 times a month for updates. In that scenario, it seems the desktop would be 10 times more likely to get the survey even though that doesn't reflect the actual usage spread.

Edit: I should add that this is a slightly different issue than what your original question is getting at. You want the raw active user count, in which case I should be 100% reported in both the desktop and the Deck counts at the same time. As far as I know, Steam does not do that.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Oh I see what you mean. You are absolutely right. Using the device less often or mostly in offline mode will drastically reduce the chance of getting the survey.

[–] ericwdhs@discuss.online 1 points 49 minutes ago

Yeah, the inverse problem also exists, multiple users on a single device causing that device to get over-reported. This is most commonly seen with cyber cafes in Asia. The effect is present all year (and is another reason to expect the actual Deck percentage to be slightly higher), but it spikes every February as Chinese cyber cafes get busy over Lunar New Year.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Oh wait, since when do they have the Steam Deck named in the stats properly? This is quiet nice.

As for the information about how many Steam users are active each month, there was an official statement by Valve. You can find it here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/3133946090937137591 . Given that the daily active users peak in Steam is much higher now, we can assume that the monthly active users is higher too. There are estimated to the current number of 200 million at the moment: https://www.pcguide.com/news/new-report-suggests-steam-now-has-over-200-million-users-making-it-over-50-larger-than-playstation/ Who knows.

So 0.45% of 200 million estimated would be 900,000. If this was true, it would be much less. It could also that Steam Deck users don't get the survey as often or they decide not to send. The Steam hardware survey itself is an estimation based on the "few" surveys they got. At last I would expect that sales figures are higher than monthly active users number. The hardware is getting older and older, some may have moved to an alternative handheld or even to a PC. Or they have a newer OLED version alongside the LCD now.

All things considered, under 1 million users is less than I expected.

[–] ericwdhs@discuss.online 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

See my other comment here. I'm in the "active Deck user, but not as main PC" crowd.

[–] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago

Or just do a search online? literally the first result.

https://commandlinux.com/statistics/steam-deck-linux-usage-growth-statistics/

The Steam Deck had an estimated 5.6 million units shipped by mid-2025, holding 48% of the tracked handheld gaming PC market in 2024.