Last month, we reported that the Steam user base on Windows 10 had climbed to an all-time high of 51.23%. This time, it appears that the operating system has lost some ground while Windows 7 is clambering up once again.
According to Valve"s hardware report - which is based on optional user surveys - for the month of July 2017, it appears that Windows 10 has fallen to 50.49%. More importantly, this decline has been attributed to the 64-bit version of the OS rather than the 32-bit iteration.
Windows 7"s user base climbed to 36.99%, which is an increase of 0.85 percentage points. All other versions of Windows lost some of their user base. As a result, the overall user base for Windows fell slightly as well, and now accounts for 96.12% of surveyed Steam users.
The report indicated some positive news for operating systems developed by other companies. While the increases in percentage are within the margin of error, Apple"s OS X/macOS grew to 3.11% and Linux progressed to 0.74%.
There were no changes in the hardware side of the report with 8GB of system RAM still the most-used configuration. The display resolution for primary displays and multi-monitor setups remained 1920x1080 and 3840x1080 respectively.
While the statistics in Steam"s report are certainly interesting, it is important to remember that they are based on optional surveys. As such, any changes in the user base of a particular software or hardware wouldn"t necessarily represent a shift in broader usage beyond the Steam gaming community.