Gamers / gaming-adjacent people have continued to swap away from Windows 7 more rapidly than the general population, implying that the end-users sticking to the operating system may be clustered in specific countries or demographics. The SHS reports that Windows 10 had an 80.37 percent market share in February 2020, up 1.14 percent from January. One interesting thing about Steam’s OS data is that it has always identified a higher percentage of users as using Windows 10 than the general population.
Steam’s Hardware Survey isn’t the best window into what high-end gamers are buying - the survey picks up every system on Steam and counts them equally, meaning the laptop where you play a handful of low-end games on business trips and the desktop you game on regularly are weighted identically in the tally - but it may have some utility when it comes to the broadest industry trends, like what operating system people are running.
For a different perspective on the issue, I decided to consult the Steam Hardware Survey.
