Platforms

Steam’s indie catalog is still brutally Windows-first: 82,207 tracked games support Windows, versus 16,437 on Mac and 11,397 on Linux. That means Mac support shows up in roughly 20% of tracked games, and Linux support in roughly 14%—small slices, but big enough now that cross-platform support is no longer a niche courtesy. For indie players, that matters because platform support increasingly signals intent. A studio shipping on Windows, Mac, and Linux is usually thinking harder about portability, accessibility, and long-tail audience reach than a developer tossing out a Windows-only build and moving on. ...

Steam got 3,449 new enriched games this week, and 3,447 of them support Windows. That’s not a market trend so much as a monopoly with a courtesy nod to everyone else. Mac support shows up in 1,160 of those games, and Linux in 830. That means roughly a third of this week’s releases bothered with Mac, and less than a quarter shipped with Linux support. If you play indies outside Windows, you’re still living in the land of “better than it used to be” rather than “actually equal.” ...