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

NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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.

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ericwdhs@discuss.online ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
@thingsiplay@beehaw.org Does this work like Reddit tagging?

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.

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- thingsiplay@lemmy.ml ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - ericwdhs@discuss.online ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
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    thingsiplay@lemmy.ml ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
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thingsiplay@lemmy.ml ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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: steamcommunity.com/groups/…/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: pcguide.com/…/new-report-suggests-steam-now-has-o… 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.

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- ericwdhs@discuss.online ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  See my other comment here. I’m in the “active Deck user, but not as main PC crowd.”
  
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