With Microsoft planning to pull the plug on one of its most popular operating systems to date on October 14, 2025, Windows 10 is living on borrowed time — but it's not going down without a fight.
Over the last month, the aging operating system has made a surprising comeback in one key battlefield, countering the slow but widespread migration of users to Windows 11.
Windows 10's impending end-of-support has been widely known since Microsoft's Windows client roadmap announcement in April 2023. At that time, Statcounter figures suggest that the operating system had a global market share among desktop users of 71.6%. A year on, in April 2024, that market share fluctuated, but ultimately only dropped by 1.7%
However, as of February 2024, updated Statcounter figures suggest that Windows 10's global market share has fallen to its lowest share of the market (58.7%) since August 2019 (59.8%) — a point in time when the then four-year-old operating system was still involved in its own drawn-out switchover from Windows 7. On the flipside of those stats, Windows 11 has climbed to its highest peak so far, claiming 38.1% of the desktop market.
By the numbers, Windows 11 adoption is healthily on the uptick. That said, one corner of the computing world seemingly isn't willing to follow suit: gaming. According to the latest Steam Hardware and Software Survey for February 2025, Windows 11 isn't on the rise. In fact, it's on the decline — and not by mere fractions of a percent, either.
Do gamers still favor Windows 10?
There are plenty of reasons for gamers to upgrade to Windows 11, including DirectX 12 Ultimate which unlocks ray tracing and variable rate shading, Auto HDR which offers older games a graphical facelift, better optimized DirectStorage for loading games faster, Dynamic Lighting control to bring all your RGB peripherals under one umbrella, and improved gaming performance in windowed mode.
However, perhaps the two most important features of that list, DirectX 12 Ultimate and DirectStorage, are also available on Windows 10. Factor in Windows 10's reputation as the more stable platform of the two, and you can understand why gamers might prefer Microsoft's previous operating system.
While the last few months of Steam's Hardware and Software Survey (a monthly survey that collects data on the platform's 132 million monthly active users) have seen Windows 11 on the rise — securing 54.9% of Steam users as of December 2024 — February's survey has flipped the script on its head entirely.
According to the most recent Steam survey, the number of Windows 10 64-bit users has shot up by 10.4%, while Windows 11 64-bit is down 9.3%, practically reversing December's figures and giving Windows 10 the majority 53.3% lead.
The shift is one of the biggest we've seen for some time and could indicate that gamers aren't quitting on Windows 10 just yet. However, with the wider trajectory of Windows 11 adoption pointing in the opposite direction, what's the real cause of this Windows 10 resurgence among gamers?
Could it be that new hardware owners have downgraded from pre-installed versions of Windows 11 following the holiday period en masse, or is there more to consider?
What caused Windows 10's comeback?
Looking elsewhere in the Steam survey, there's an even more impressive shift in Steam user's demographics when it comes to one key area: language.
Over the past month, there has been a more than 20% rise in the number of Steam users selecting Simplified Chinese as their language. This pushes the total population of Simplified Chinese users up to 50% of the platform, with English trailing at 23.8% ahead of Russian at 6.7%.
This influx of Chinese users may be the cause of the sharp uptick in reported Windows 10 users on the platform, with Statcounter data specifically relating to China estimating that only 26.4% of users are operating on Windows 11 systems, compared to nearly 40-42% of European and North American users.
Is Windows 11's dominance an inevitability?
Ultimately, the closer we get to Windows 10's October 14 end-of-support date, the more clear it will become: the Windows 11 take-over is an inevitability.
While China's Windows 10 adoption is still relatively low, Chinese users are seemingly more willing to stand by older operating systems, with Windows 7 still estimated to be run by 16.5% of desktop PCs.
However, with Windows 11 adoption steadily progressing elsewhere, it seems as if all things are going to plan for Microsoft as it seeks to unify its users under its flagship operating system.
