Windows 10 is going down great with gamers, catching Windows 7 fast

Windows 10

Windows 10 is popular among PC gamers – or at least Steam users, at any rate – and indeed it's closing rapidly on Windows 7's market share among users of Valve's gaming service.

New Steam survey results for January which have just been revealed show Windows 7 in the lead with 42.08% of the user base on this version of the OS, but Windows 10 is now only 8% adrift, in second place with 34.05%.

That's a healthy increase of 1.6% for Windows 10 compared to the previous month, and a decline of 0.5% for Windows 7. If an around 2% monthly swing continues, it will only be four months until Windows 10 draws level with Windows 7.

Hot streak

Mind you, Windows 10 has had a particularly hot run of things last month, with even the analytics firms that study the whole desktop PC market observing a large rise – there's no guarantee that strength will continue going forwards. Mind you, it seems only a matter of time, certainly for gamers, before Windows 10 dethrones Windows 7.

Folks don't seem to have been put off by some of Microsoft's more heavy-handed tactics in pushing the Windows 10 upgrade on Windows 7/8 users, which have included a rather invasive and persistent pop-up message – at times designed to be angled more towards getting users to click to upgrade – not to mention Redmond's most recent move to make Windows 10 a recommended update.

Back to the Steam survey, and as for Windows 8/8.1, combined that's on a total of 16.5%. If you're interested in the old versions of Windows, Windows XP is still being run by 2.31% of Steam gamers, and Vista by 0.42%.

Via: Neowin

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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