Windows 11 had a big year among Steam users in 2024. The operating system is now used by 54.96% of Steam gamers, according to the December Steam hardware and software survey. That figure comes on the heels of a respectable month-over-month increase of 6.16% between November and December 2024. Steam's statistics from one year earlier listed Windows 11 at 41.95% among Steam users, so overall the OS gained over 13% market share in twelve months.
Windows 11's gains come largely at the expense of Windows 10 losing market share. Windows 10 was used by 53.45% of Steam users in December 2023. The older version of Windows now has a 42.39% market share, meaning Windows 10 lost over 11% market share among Steam gamers in one year.
Windows 10 will soon reach its end of support, so many have upgraded their systems to Windows 11 in preparation. Newer PCs also ship with Windows 11, so as old hardware goes out the door, so does Windows 10.
Windows 11 also includes several features to improve the gaming experience, including Auto HDR and DirectStorage. Microsoft shared a blog post in December highlighting the gaming experience on Windows 11. The company appears eager to get people to upgrade to Windows 11 before Windows 10 reaches its end of support on October 14, 2025.
For a variety of reasons, gamers have upgraded to Windows 11 at a much higher rate than non-gamers. Among those causes is the fact that Windows 11 has strict minimum requirements, so many older computers cannot upgrade. Gaming PCs often run on newer hardware, clearing the path for an upgrade to Windows 11. While 54.96 of Steam users are on Windows 11, Windows 10 still dominates its successor among general users. According to Statcounter, 62.7% of desktops run Windows 10 compared to 34.12% running Windows 11.
Since these figures are from Statcounter and Steam rather than Microsoft, it's difficult to make an — ahem — apples to apples comparison. They also measure different metrics (Steam users and desktop users). But the disparity between Windows 11 vs Windows 10 usage is so large that it's safe to say gamers are quicker to upgrade to the newer OS.
