Steam passes 30 million user mark, offers over 1,200 games

[Emil]

Valve has announced that its Steam platform, which provides games and digital entertainment for the PC and Mac, has been doing phenomenally well recently. During the past 12 months the platform has experienced new user growth of 178 percent (year-over-year), pushing the total number of active accounts to over 30 million. In the same time period, sales growth has increased over 200 percent, and there are now over 1,200 games offered. Steamworks, a suite of publishing services in tangible and electronic versions of today's popular games, has now shipped over 200 titles since it was released two years ago. Finally, the Steam Cloud (introduced in Spring 2008) has surpassed the 100 million files saved milestone.

Peak simultaneous player numbers were also up to over three million, with over six million unique gamers accessing Steam each day. To meet all this demand, the Steam infrastructure has been increased and now has ability to run at 400Gps.

"Steam is on track to record the biggest year in its six year history," Gabe Newell, president of Valve, said in a statement. "The year has marked major development advances to the platform with the introduction of support for Mac titles, the Steam Wallet and in-game item buying support, and more. We believe the growth in accounts, sales, and player numbers is completely tied to this work and we plan to continue to develop the platform to offer more marketing, sales, and design tools for developers and publishers of games and digital entertainment."

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/40722-steam-passes-30-million-user-mark-offers-over-1200-games.html

 

[lawfer]

Well, this is exactly what happens when you actually listen to your customers' needs.

 

[princeton]

True that. Except for upgrading their awful engine valve listens to their customers better than any other company. And judging by portal 2 videos my complaint seems invalid.

 

[TomSEA]

Steam is the poster child of how to do digital distribution right...

 

[fwilliams]

a few million more users are waiting

We are waiting for a native Linux port. I do not know who is telling them not to do it.
They already have most, if not all of the coding done.

 

[princeton]

fwilliams said:
We are waiting for a native Linux port. I do not know who is telling them not to do it.
They already have most, if not all of the coding done.

Where do you get this info? Valve has already stated they aren't doing a linux port. If your referring to the files found in the mac release, that was like one file. The reason they wont do a linux port is because the userbase is too small to make it financially worth it. On top of that the main portion of linux computers are server devices.

 

[KG363]

it would make no sense for them to release it on linux

 

[Darkshadoe]

I would imagine it would scare Microsoft slightly. If they released Steam on Linux, quite a few people would have no reason to buy Microsoft products. One of the reasons Microsoft stays number one is because on having no real competition.

 

[Kibaruk]

It will not make any sense targetting linux, whats the market penetration on linux home users? Less than 1% of the computers online according to MarketShare (And not considering how many of those are home users), why would they want to target that?

 

[motrin]

i'm one of the 30mil.

full steam ahead!

 

[Relic]

Great news for Steam and hope they keep it up . Still not a fan though of forced Steam integration on non-Valve games, but most of the time there DRM is optional which I'm fine with since we have a choice.

 

[Prosercunus]

I love Steam. Nuff said.

 

[Emil]

I don't use Steam, but all my friends do. I only hear good things about it.

 

[treeski]

Yay Steam! Keep up the good work!
I too would definitely like an updated engine though!

 

[Midgetmax]

I just got done playing CS:S Beta. They made some good improvements! I LOVE STEAM! andi think its funny that they have two domain names. (www.Steampowered.com) and (Steamingpileofshit.com)

 

[fwilliams]

princeton said:

fwilliams said:
We are waiting for a native Linux port. I do not know who is telling them not to do it.
They already have most, if not all of the coding done.

Where do you get this info? Valve has already stated they aren't doing a linux port. If your referring to the files found in the mac release, that was like one file. The reason they wont do a linux port is because the userbase is too small to make it financially worth it. On top of that the main portion of linux computers are server devices.

look here:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODE3Mw

 

[Guest]

Princeton posting from my phone.

That's what I said. It was a few bits of code. If there was as much as they claimed there was people would already have hacked steam over to linux. Here's the facts. They haven't.

 

[fwilliams]

Kibaruk said:
It will not make any sense targetting linux, whats the market penetration on linux home users? Less than 1% of the computers online according to MarketShare (And not considering how many of those are home users), why would they want to target that?

Yeah! Why would any one want only 1% of a billion users. Can not make money that way. No go back 30 years I am sure there were way more users back then when all the money was made!

 

[fwilliams]

Guest said:
Princeton posting from my phone.

That's what I said. It was a few bits of code. If there was as much as they claimed there was people would already have hacked steam over to linux. Here's the facts. They haven't.

And here:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODE3NA

But, do not believe it. Microsoft has probably paid or threatened them not to release it.

 

[lawfer]

fwilliams said:

Guest said:
Princeton posting from my phone.

That's what I said. It was a few bits of code. If there was as much as they claimed there was people would already have hacked steam over to linux. Here's the facts. They haven't.

And here:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODE3NA

But, do not believe it. Microsoft has probably paid or threatened them not to release it.

Dude, they have already publicly stated they will NOT do a Linux port. Get over it.

 

[princeton]

lawfer said:

fwilliams said:

Guest said:
Princeton posting from my phone.

That's what I said. It was a few bits of code. If there was as much as they claimed there was people would already have hacked steam over to linux. Here's the facts. They haven't.

And here:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODE3NA

But, do not believe it. Microsoft has probably paid or threatened them not to release it.

Dude, they have already publicly stated they will NOT do a Linux port. Get over it.

Seriously. He's acting so hopeless about it like it's the end of the world.

 

[Guest]

Steam is GREAT! But there support for such a big company is like pulling teeth. I think they have one guy on an old mac sitting in a garage taking one email at a time. It takes over a week for them to get back to you and they really never pay attention to your question. The idea of a Telephone is foreign to this company. Think of the people that could have jobs if they only actually were concerned about there users!

 

[princeton]

Guest said:
Steam is GREAT! But there support for such a big company is like pulling teeth. I think they have one guy on an old mac sitting in a garage taking one email at a time. It takes over a week for them to get back to you and they really never pay attention to your question. The idea of a Telephone is foreign to this company. Think of the people that could have jobs if they only actually were concerned about there users!

Funny. When i send requests to valve I get an answer in less than 2 days. Every time.

 

[Guest]

I'm not surprised by this news, though I must admit it does make me wince, as I really dislike how far that the digital rights management technology is going, so that not only can I not sell back the program if I ever want to get rid of it and get back some of the sixty dollars I spend on a modern game, but that I can't even play the game offline. Though, at least, games like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II only demand a Steam account, and seems a lot better than Starcraft II which demanded I register for a battle.net and a Windows Live Gaming account.

 

[gobbybobby]

kg363 said:
it would make no sense for them to release it on linux

Sure it would, if you had asked me a year ago I would have said it makes no sense to release it for MAC! If steam supported linux (officialy) then it would encorage developers to make games for the OS and break MS dominence of the PC Operating System Market.