Windows 11 hits a new high on Steam — but Microsoft should be embarrassed by Windows 10 holdouts

Windows 11 continues to grow in usage among gamers. According to the latest Steam Hardware & Software survey, 65.59% of all Steam users run Windows 11. That's a 2.02% increase month-over-month and the continuation of a general trend we've followed for months.

Windows 11 surpassed 60% usage among Steam gamers in June. Considering how many people use Steam — 132 million monthly active users as of November 2025, according to DemandSage — an increase of 5 percentage points for Windows 11 represents a large number of users.

Those rooting for Windows as a platform don't have anything to worry about when it comes to Steam software usage. 94.79% of all Steam users are on some form of Windows, with Windows 10 sitting at second place with a 29.06% market share. Windows 7 still has a surprisingly measurable 0.08% share.

If you group iterations of the same OS together, Linux (3.20%) trails Windows. As expected, macOS is in last place with just 2.02% of Steam users running Apple's operating system.

Other figures from the November Steam Hardware & Software survey are unsurprising. 32GB remains the most-seen configuration and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (4.22%) and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (4.16%) continue to be popular.

Holding on to Windows 10

While gamers seem more likely to upgrade to Windows 11 than other users, over 29% of all Steam users still run Windows 10. That could be seen as an indictment, given that Windows 10 reached its end of support in October of this year.

Speaking of Windows generally, Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke recently stated that around 1 billion PCs have not been upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Of those, about 500 million can't run Windows 11, while the other half could be upgraded but remain on the older OS.

Windows 11 only surpassed Windows 10 in June of this year, according to Statcounter.

As the end of Windows 10 support grew closer throughout 2025, it seemed likely a mass migration to Windows 11 would occur. There's a chance that was minimized by Microsoft offering a year of Windows 10 security updates for free.

Regardless of the reasons for people staying on Windows 10, Microsoft has drawn criticism for the situation. While there are always holdovers when a new operating system comes out, the adoption of Windows 11 has been slower than expected.

Microsoft is pushing Windows to be an agentic OS, which has proven unpopular. Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, put fuel on the fire when he said "the fact that people are unimpressed ... is mindblowing to me" when speaking of AI on Windows.

Windows 11 has also been criticized for its full-screen multipage popup ads, and other methods of promoting paid Microsoft services.

As we move further past the end of Windows 10 support, we may see holdouts upgrade to Windows 11 or purchase new PCs running the newer OS.

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