Chinese-speaking users accounted for 50 percent of Steam's playerbase last month.
Valve has released its latest Steam Hardware and Software Survey, which revealed a 20.88 percent increase in Simplified Chinese-speaking users in February 2025, making up half of the entire userbase.
As Automaton noted, February usually brings an increase of Chinese users to Steam as it coincides with Chinese New Year holidays. However, this year’s increase was significantly higher than usual - 2024 saw an equivalent increase of 7.26 percent.
However, it seems that the latest Steam Hardware Survey results combined the numbers from both the international and China-only Steam clients. This is the most plausible explanation for this sudden jump in Chinese speakers on the platform, especially as Taiwan and Hong Kong use Traditional Chinese, which only accounts for 1.1% of Steam users.
Note that Eurogamer does not talk about this at all.
Correlinking this with some more notable data from the hardware survey:
The most popular system RAM has changed to 32GB with +13.73% increase from previous survey. Previously most popular amount was 16GB, that dropped -8.01% this survey. More people in China use 32GB, interesting to know.
Windows 10 usage has increased noticably by +10.47%. Guess it’s still popular around there. Don’t break what works nicely, understandable. Similarly, Windows 11 usage has decreased by -9.36% .
Linux usage went down by -0.61%, it looks like they use Linux way less than rest of the world for their personal computers.
I built a PC earlier this year and system RAM was such a small percentage of the total cost that I decided to splurge and got more than I really need right now. It’s easy to fall into “Better to have and not need” thinking.
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From elsewhere:
Note that Eurogamer does not talk about this at all.
Literally how Wukong’s numbers got pumped up
I’m guessing China has a separate client to comply with the law without needing to add backdoors for everyone else?
Seems strange that they were previously excluding those numbers either way.
Yes, like linking your actual ID before getting access, and even then you only get to play games that the government has allowed you to play.
Fun! Makes the US look like a paradise.
Correlinking this with some more notable data from the hardware survey:
The most popular system RAM has changed to 32GB with +13.73% increase from previous survey. Previously most popular amount was 16GB, that dropped -8.01% this survey. More people in China use 32GB, interesting to know.
Windows 10 usage has increased noticably by +10.47%. Guess it’s still popular around there. Don’t break what works nicely, understandable. Similarly, Windows 11 usage has decreased by -9.36% .
Linux usage went down by -0.61%, it looks like they use Linux way less than rest of the world for their personal computers.
I doubt it’s home use that pulls 32GB of RAM into the majority, but probably just a lot of internet cafe rigs that have that much memory.
As for OS, I’m not sure.
I built a PC earlier this year and system RAM was such a small percentage of the total cost that I decided to splurge and got more than I really need right now. It’s easy to fall into “Better to have and not need” thinking.
But hey, I can run VMs now.
I did 32 because at the time, the price difference to 16gb was like 20 bucks.