Steam Passes 15 Million Accounts

[Andy Chalk]

Steam Passes 15 Million Accounts

Steam [http://valvesoftware.com/], its popular digital distribution platform.

The service also saw a 158 percent year-over-year sales growth, driven largely by the popularity of titles such as Steamworks [http://www.callofduty.com/], a free suite of tools that will simplify many areas of the development process, including product key authentication, auto-updates and matchmaking.

"PC gaming is thriving, and has evolved into an era of constant connectivity," said Valve President Gabe Newell. "That connectivity gives us the ability to have a much better relationship with our customers, not just for delivering our games, but across all aspects of our business - including the design, development and support of our games. Features like Guest Passes, Free Weekends, Gifting and the Steam Community have been very well received both by customers and the developers who are using Steam."

"We are accelerating our release of new functionality in the next year as well as finding new ways to work with our partners such as the release of Steamworks, which allows them to bring the many benefits of Steam to their package products," he added.


Permalink

 

[Andy Chalk]

For the first time ever I have the opportunity to play around with Steam "for real," and I have to admit it's pretty cool. I would never buy a game over Steam (boxes and manuals FTW) and there are a few other aspects of the service I don't care for, but it looks like a pretty decent gaming community. Am I off-base in thinking it's somewhat Xbox Live-ish in nature?

 

[Andy Chalk]

I played around with it some last night, joined a couple groups, grabbed my usual suspect "friend," uploaded an avatar, that sort of thing. It struck me as a sort of primitive social network with (obviously) strong game support, but without the depth of "extras" offered by Live. That depth is really what I was hoping for, and where I saw the similarities with Live; their absence isn't a tremendous blow but I am starting to see the appeal of gamertags and other e-peens you can wave around publicly.

 

[Frederf]

This must be directly related to their new "friend network" thing.

 

[xCraig]

Congratulations to the Guys at Steam, I've been a dedicated member since the beginning!
And no that isnt a lie I have a 4-digit Steam ID.

But anyways, Yeah Congrats to those guys and good luck breaking 20 million!

 

[Andy_Panthro]

They certainly are successful...

I'd like to know how they compare with other services though. Also, I'd like to know how many people know that there are other services out there?

Still, no one can claim PC gaming is dying right? I mean, 15M Steam users must indicate there's a very large market out there.

 

[the_carrot]

I played around with it some last night, joined a couple groups, grabbed my usual suspect "friend," uploaded an avatar, that sort of thing. It struck me as a sort of primitive social network with (obviously) strong game support, but without the depth of "extras" offered by Live. That depth is really what I was hoping for, and where I saw the similarities with Live; their absence isn't a tremendous blow but I am starting to see the appeal of gamertags and other e-peens you can wave around publicly.

You didn't, by chance, play a game of any kind did you? That's really what it's for, the social stuff is almost tacked on, and not that well done. Focus on the games not the social crapola.

 

[AceDiamond]

I played around with it some last night, joined a couple groups, grabbed my usual suspect "friend," uploaded an avatar, that sort of thing. It struck me as a sort of primitive social network with (obviously) strong game support, but without the depth of "extras" offered by Live. That depth is really what I was hoping for, and where I saw the similarities with Live; their absence isn't a tremendous blow but I am starting to see the appeal of gamertags and other e-peens you can wave around publicly.

You didn't, by chance, play a game of any kind did you? That's really what it's for, the social stuff is almost tacked on, and not that well done. Focus on the games not the social crapola.

Agreed, even though I find it very useful to have that in-game overlay to do things like IM people quickly while waiting to respawn or whatever.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

I find Steam is superior in ease of use to other services by far. Impulse is a close second, and Impulse has it's own advantages (selectible install paths, don't have to launch it to play impulse games)

I barely use the social thing, but being able to chat with steam freinds while in game is an awesome feature I miss with non steam games.

 

[Arcticflame]

Congratulations to the Guys at Steam, I've been a dedicated member since the beginning!
And no that isnt a lie I have a 4-digit Steam ID.

But anyways, Yeah Congrats to those guys and good luck breaking 20 million!

Seeing as this is a 2 year old topic. I'd wager they did break 20 million by now.

 

[Daveman]

For the first time ever I have the opportunity to play around with Steam "for real," and I have to admit it's pretty cool. I would never buy a game over Steam (boxes and manuals FTW) and there are a few other aspects of the service I don't care for, but it looks like a pretty decent gaming community. Am I off-base in thinking it's somewhat Xbox Live-ish in nature?

... well Steam's free for one. Plus I'd check out the new layout Beta if you're new to it as you'll probably have to use it eventually anyway. Plus it looks RIDICULOUSLY good. Plus their sales make them a surprisingly large amount because a huge number of people will buy a game when it's discounted on the premise that they might one day want to play it. I would never have accumulated as many games as I have if I didn't have Steam.

EDIT: WOAH, HA, very very very old thread. I should have guessed from the 15 million thing. This is quite a feat of necromancy...

 

[Pimppeter2]

*Shakes first angrily*

But digital distribution is the enemy!

EDIT: GAH! NECROS! Got me all worked up

 

[the_carrot]

Oh weird...Yeah, this thread is ancient.