There is no evidence presented anywhere which disproves that. Your claim was that it showed evidence of growth, but if you read it then it turns out it is using the steam survey, and shows no growth in percentage terms at all.
The article above showed evidence of growth, read it again.
And there is actual sales data that comes from developers. It's very different from those survey numbers.
Also, since there is no info on methodology of that survey, you can't know even what it means. I've heard from many Linux users, that they never got one while using Steam on Linux, while they got it while using it on Windows for example. It even never comes up in Valve's own SteamOS, so it's clearly not something Valve put a lot of thought in.
So, I'll stand by what I said. Data from that survey is useless as is and should not be applied for any market evaluation.
The OP's comment "The several dozen people playing AAA games on linux must be thrilled." seems pretty realistic.
Increased number of games is simply because it is close to zero-effort for most game engines to press the button and deploy to Linux Steam. That doesn't mean anyone is actually playing them.
I had a quick look at the GOL site and I didn't see anything obvious claiming growth. Ironically (given the topic of this HN story) I did see this:
Get ready to become a neural detective as 'Observer' is now on Linux, AMD not supported.... I spoke with Aspyr Media, who confirmed to me the team has "currently no plans to support AMD at this time for Observer".[1]
Yet, clearly gaming on Linux will take off any day now... (And this is from someone who runs a Linux desktop computer)
> Increased number of games is simply because it is close to zero-effort for most game engines to press the button and deploy to Linux Steam.
It's far from zero effort. Besides, engines are making Linux support easier, is also driven by demand. But hey, legacy execs would rather talk about how Linux gamers don't buy games, instead of actually making games for Linux.
