Players are finally migrating to Windows 11 after 3 years.
After three years, Windows 11 has established itself as the primary operating system on Steam and shows no signs of slowing down.
Recently, Windows 11 has experienced a notable increase in popularity. According to the latest Steam hardware survey, 51.97% of the user base is using this operating system, representing a 4.28% increase from the previous month and its best result since its launch over three years ago. Meanwhile, Windows 10, which is the second most used operating system on Steam, has seen its share decrease by 2.71%, leaving it with 45.95% of respondents according to Valve.
Just a couple of months ago, Windows 11 surpassed Windows 10 for the first time in the survey. The gap between the two systems is widening, with most of the lost Windows 10 users migrating to Windows 11. At the beginning of the year, the adoption of Windows 11 was lower in the Steam surveys, as some users mentioned that Windows 10 offered better gaming performance.
The system change is not entirely surprising, given that Microsoft plans to retire Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. Subsequently, the company will offer an additional year of security updates only for those who purchase a $30 paid plan. Currently, most computers can install Windows 11 at no extra cost, which includes years of security updates, explaining the migration before the retirement of Windows 10.
Despite being more popular now, Windows 11 still faces certain issues, particularly regarding PC gaming. Recently, AMD's Ryzen 9000 processors showed surprisingly low performance upon release, largely due to compatibility with Windows 11. Although the latest update 24H2 has resolved several issues, bugs and quirks are common in this operating system, even after three years since its release.
Although Steam's hardware surveys are not always the most accurate source, a steady trend towards Windows 11 has been observed since mid-year. On the other hand, some survey results are somewhat unusual; for example, the RTX 3060 graphics card has seen a 1.53% increase, now representing 7.24% of Valve's user base, which is curious, as it is not one of the best models available currently and the new RTX 4060 offers superior performance at a similar price.
Additionally, Microsoft has begun implementing a new Reply Suggestions feature in the Phone Link app, which uses artificial intelligence models to provide quick responses to specific messages, thereby improving response speed.
On the other hand, AMD's RX 7000 graphics cards have yet to gain significant attention among gamers, with only the RX 7900 XTX model representing 0.37% in the survey, a decrease of 0.03% compared to last month. Although Steam does not capture every GPU, it does ensure to list those that have a significant share.
Finally, it's important to mention that with the recent update of Windows 11, applications like WordPad, which has been present since Windows 95 but has fallen into disuse in recent years, have been permanently removed.
