Windows The PC Gaming King may lose its throne in the coming years!
Microsoft may have dropped the ball one too many times for games, and they are revolting.
But why does Windows dominate the market, and who would take its spot?
Windows The PC Gaming King
In summary, the reason why Windows, the PC gaming king, dominates the market is because of market share.
Because according to Steam’s 2025 survey, Windows 11 accounts for 70%! Meanwhile another 26.70%, totalling over 95%.
However, this comes as no surprise, as Windows has been the dominant operating system of choice since the 1990s. In fact, their marketing platform was around the very aspect of gaming.
In 1995 Bill Gates himself starred in a promotional video spouting Doom on Windows. Since Windows 95 they have boasted themselves as the gamer’s platform of choice. Sure, Games for Windows Live, the service, died a deserved rotting death. But many games from the get-go were designed around and optimised for Windows platforms.
Currently Windows, the PC gaming king, reigns, as it supports a massive game library. Many work just out of the box and are developed natively on Windows itself. As the dominant one, many hardware vendors focus on Bill Gates’s platform first, developing drivers and updates for it specifically.
But the main takeaway was that it was just far easier and more convenient. Buying and installing the top dog OS, especially with Vista and 7, was just very simple and clean. The OS used to run pretty well back in the day and did not eat a tonne of resources.
If you wanted to move to an alternative like Linux or Mac, you had a mountain to climb. Linux gets you lost in the forest with its many versions and technicality, while Mac just straight up has 5 games!
Waves Became Oceans
However, the tides are changing, as it seems, with Linux grabbing 4% of the Steam base. A measly number, I know, yet a run starts with a step. Because now people are starting to get a bit frustrated with the king.
Constant buggy and lacklustre updates, anti-consumer moves and just bloat, bloat, bloat. But now many games are compatible with Linux through development and tools like Proton and Wine.
Since the end of Windows 10 support, many have begrudgingly moved over to 11 only to hop onto similar Linux distros like Mint and Ubuntu.
Some even play both sides with WSL dual booting, seeing what all the fuss is about. With more and more hardware developers like Nvidia finally taking Linux into consideration, there really is not a lot of reason for gamers to not make the switch.
Windows The PC Gaming King will reign supreme for another year, but just wait and see Linux gain note. Also the Steam Machine and other platforms being different also helps the numbers.
But if you are building a machine just to run games and chat with friends, Linux is not a bad spot to go. Mac is still whack, though, albeit a little bit better.
