Some speculated that this was being driven by PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' popularity in China, a market where Windows 10 isn't even available and Windows 7 is still king. So, does this month's Steam survey, which shows almost every OS version except Windows 7 gaining market share at Win7's expense, mean that PUBG's Chinese bubble has burst?
Betanews has this take on things:
Depending on which analyst firm you believe, Windows 10 is either a whisker away from overtaking Windows 7 as the most popular desktop operating system, or still quite a distance off.
Steam’s monthly usage survey, which shows usage share from the gamers’ perspective, paints an entirely different picture however. It has consistently reported Windows 10 as the top operating system of choice, until recently, when Windows 7 roared into the top spot.
At the same time that Windows 7 gained in popularity, so did the growth of Chinese gamers on the service, which was clearly not a coincidence. If you want future [sic] proof of a link between the two, December’s updated stats help prove it.
In the last month of 2017, Windows 7 had a share of 56.45 percent (made up of 54.79 percent for the 64-bit build, and 1.66 percent for the 32-bit version). In November, its share was a whopping 71.3 percent, meaning it fell 14.85 percentage points in a month.
Also in December, Simplified Chinese -- currently the most popular language on Steam -- fell 15.31 percentage points to 49.04 percent. (Second placed English grew 6.40 percentage points and now sits on 23.42 percent.)I've been waiting for the PUBG bubble to burst for a while now, as the game's buggy, unpolished reality caught up with the breathless hype of its gaming media coverage, so it should be interesting to see just how closely PUBG's fortunes track with Windows 7's fortunes on Steam over the coming months.