Steam surpasses 90 million users, 30,000 listed games

[Polycount]

Why it matters: Despite more and more competitors challenging Valve's iron grip on the PC gaming market, Steam is still growing at a steady rate. Thanks to numbers revealed by the company this week, we now have a few more concrete examples of that growth.

According to Valve, Steam has officially surpassed the 90 million monthly active user mark. The PC gaming client's daily active user figure is similarly impressive, sitting at 47 million as of writing.

Of course, those numbers could be slightly misleading. Are "active" users anybody who has the Steam client running, or only users who take advantage of its various features, such as community discussions and the chat system?

Regardless, we're not looking to take away from Valve's accomplishments here. Through years of effort and -- with a few exceptions -- a consumer-focused approach to business, Steam has gone from being an obscure storefront to the go-to PC gaming platform for millions of users.

Impressive user numbers aside, Valve hit another milestone with Steam recently. The platform has surpassed 30,000 listed games; not including software or DLC for said games.

That number probably sounds pretty good at first, but in this case, quantity could be winning out over quality. Since the rise of Steam Direct, thousands of low-quality "asset flips" have arrived on the platform. These games are usually hastily thrown-together projects that consist of very little (if any) original code, artwork, or audio files.

Valve is likely hoping planned improvements to Steam's game discovery algorithms will force low-effort titles such as this to the bottom of search results; killing them off without direct intervention.

At any rate, one thing is clear: Valve, and Steam as a whole, has come a long way over the past decade. With a lot of hard work and a better response to growing competition from the likes of Epic and Discord, the long-standing platform may continue to thrive for years to come.

Image courtesy NerdBite

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https://www.techspot.com/news/78263-steam-surpasses-90-million-users-30000-listed-games.html

 

[kira setsu]

Of those 30k games though, how many are complete throwaway garbage?

steam is the main honcho on pc but it's tiime for them to pay attention to the competition and customers and actually put in some work.

 

[Footlong]

How much of those 90 millions are active accounts? How many of those 30K games are actually worth playing? Not good, just worth playing? I say this because I think its time for Valve to clean the house. The accounts will be hard since some people paid money for it and don't use it anymore, but games is another beast. They need to stop allowing crap games to be sold there.

 

[kapital98]

How much of those 90 millions are active accounts? How many of those 30K games are actually worth playing? Not good, just worth playing? I say this because I think its time for Valve to clean the house. The accounts will be hard since some people paid money for it and don't use it anymore, but games is another beast. They need to stop allowing crap games to be sold there.

They consistently do this in a lot of ways. The biggest two examples would be bans (CSGO is a big example) and also with stolen keys.

Stolen keys (legally purchased from key resellers) can result in your entire account being forfeited. A huge deal for someone with a library of games.

The games are a harder thing to do and they've taken important, but nominal, steps to improve that.

 

[Mister_K]

How much of those 90 millions are active accounts? How many of those 30K games are actually worth playing? Not good, just worth playing? I say this because I think its time for Valve to clean the house. The accounts will be hard since some people paid money for it and don't use it anymore, but games is another beast. They need to stop allowing crap games to be sold there.

Why should they clean house? I am confused... Outside of bans as @kapital98 suggested, it doesn't make sense. But even bans does not mean the whole account is banned as it's all per title specific.

Cleaning 10+ year old inactive accounts, maybe, from technical stand point at least, it will clean up the database(s) but I doubt it matters that much.

 

[mailpup]

Stolen keys (legally purchased from key resellers) can result in your entire account being forfeited

In general, stolen items cannot be made legal just by purchasing them. Possession of stolen goods is still illegal regardless of how you came to have them.

 

[Footlong]

Why should they clean house? I am confused... Outside of bans as @kapital98 suggested, it doesn't make sense. But even bans does not mean the whole account is banned as it's all per title specific.

Cleaning 10+ year old inactive accounts, maybe, from technical stand point at least, it will clean up the database(s) but I doubt it matters that much.

It matters to developers. I know a few developers who are lead to believe that the Steam user base is as large as a console like PS4. This is not true at all since many players on Steam are no longer active in the platform.