The day we’ve all been waiting for is finally here – Windows 10 64-bit has finally overtaken Windows 7 64-bit as the most popular operating system for Steam users. While many people would assume that the majority of PC gamers would have immediately switched over to Windows 10 on account of its free upgrade path and general lack of downsides, the Steam community has been fighting it for a long time. Many Steam users felt that they couldn’t trust Microsoft anymore after their rejection of Windows 8, and so they backed into Windows 7 with an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it attitude.”
The number of Steam users that utilized Windows 10 has been slowly crawling up for a while, and the last Steam hardware survey done by Valve has shown that Microsoft’s latest OS has finally overtaken Windows 7 64-bit as the majority, now taking up 36.97% of all Steam users (a number up 2.96% from last month.)
Looking at the overall share of operating systems, you can see how the share of Windows users is slowly shifting towards Windows 10 on just about all fronts (except for those one or two people who switched to Windows Vista, of all things.) If this pattern continues to move in the direction it has, it’s fair to assume that Windows 10 will dwarf Windows 7 and Windows 8 within the next year or so.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story stated Windows 10 had overtaken Windows 7, when instead (and technically speaking) Windows 10 64-bit has overtaken Windows 7 64-bit. Windows 7 remains the top choice for Steam gamers as a whole (32bit and 64bit).
