The figures that Steam posted on New Year’s Day for December 2020 Linux gaming market share showed a drop from 0.33% to just 0.57%. That’s a pretty big drop, but now Valve has updated their numbers, pointing out that Linux is still on a decline in percentage terms, but not as bad as originally reported.
After being 0.9% for the month of November, Valve’s revised December 2020 figures put the Linux gaming market share at 0.74%, or down 0.16%, but at least not so significant that the Linux pushed gaming size to just half a percent.
As for the December dip, there are a string of opinions from Cyberpunk 2077 pushing up Windows numbers (Cyberpunk can run on Linux via Steam Play, but with various bugs), an increase in Chinese users, and the sale of winter games whose Linux market benefits more. There is also an issue of increased Steam users in general due to Cyberpunk 2077 and also around the Christmas and New Years holidays with a lot of free time.
In any case, the results of the Steam Survey now point to the Linux rate of 0.74%, while macOS is at 2.74% and Windows 96.51%.