Steam Flirts With $1 Billion in 2010

[Andy Chalk]

Steam Flirts With $1 Billion in 2010

2010 was a pretty good year for Steam [http://store.steampowered.com], which is estimated to have brought in nearly $1 billion in sales over the course of the year.

Forecasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment [http://www.blizzard.com], its digital distribution platform sure does pull in a lot of money.

FADE estimates that Steam earned roughly $970 million in sales in 2010, including $213 million in December alone. Valve was the third-largest publisher on the platform, primarily thanks to the 2009 release Left 4 Dead 2 [http://www.amazon.com/Left-4-Dead-2-Pc/dp/B002BRYXRQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1296773154&sr=8-2], but Steam proved a very valuable distribution platform for a large number of companies.

"Steam's growth has been remarkable during the year," said Benjamin Schlichter, director of research and analysis at FADE. "Over 180 titles were estimated reaching over $1 million USD in revenue for the year, painting a very healthy market for developers and publishers, with more room for growth in the future."

Unsurprisingly, Modern Warfare 2 [http://www.amazon.com/Call-Duty-Black-Ops-Pc/dp/B003JVF728/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1296773190&sr=8-4] led the way, earning a combined $137.6 million for the year. Black Ops alone sold an estimated 1.6 million copies on Steam, just missing the $100 million mark despite being out for less than two months.

The top ten selling titles on Steam for 2010 by estimated gross revenues:


Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision) - $98.2 Million USD
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision) - $39.4 Million USD
Left 4 Dead 2 (Valve) - $36.0 Million USD
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Electronic Arts) - $25.4 Million USD
Sid Meier's Civilization V (2K Games) - $21.9 Million USD
Portal (Valve) - $20.0 Million USD
Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda Softworks) - $17.0 Million USD
Metro 2033 (THQ) - $13.4 Million USD
Mafia II (2K Games) - $11.9 Million USD
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising (THQ) - $10.8 Million USD


Not bad for a dying platform, eh?


Permalink

 

[Baradiel]

Not too bad at all. Just out of interest, if Steam is the third largest publisher, who is the second? EA? Activision?

 

[Wieke]

I assume this is all revenue generated trough steam (by all the games for their publishers) lumped together. Not the revenue made by Valve.

Still impressive.

 

[Canid117]

Valve is king of the digital distribution mountain. And this mountain is made of precious metals.

 

[Shameless]

With all that money com on Valve continue the Half Life series ! please ?

 

[Sacman]

Here we go...

OT: I'm glad Metro 2033 sold so well that was one of my favorite shooters of recent memory...<.<

 

[qbanknight]

Holy shit dude, can we seriously give this news to those PC-stalwarts who swear PC gaming is dying? I mean damn, this isn't even counting Starcraft 2 and WoW or the myraid of adventure games. This industry is still huge

 

[Wrann]

That's pretty impressive and considering some of the impressive looking games coming out this year it is possible for them to break 1 billion and that would be awesome.

 

[JS ibanez]

I love steam!! ALso surprised to see dawn of war 2 doing so well for itself. Honestly didnt realise it was that popular

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Wow, I didn't expect to see Dawn of War 2 on there. Its a brilliant series, but I never thought it would be such a mainstream hit.

NINJA'd by less than a second.

 

[JediMB]

Not too bad at all. Just out of interest, if Steam is the third largest publisher, who is the second? EA? Activision?

Steam doesn't publish anything. Valve is the third-largest publisher on the PC.

Actually, what it's saying is that Valve is the third-largest publisher on Steam.

Activision seems like a safe bet for the largest, since the two best-selling titles on Steam were both theirs.

 

[Hiphophippo]

I'm very happy to hear Metro sold well. That's basically what I took from this. Despite how incredibly awesome it is I rarely hear that people have played it.

 

[thatstheguy]

I'm honestly pretty shocked that it's as high as a billion dollars. Pleasantly surprised at the fact Metro 2033 is on there. Didn't think it did that well seeing as how there wasn't much hype before and after the game released.

 

[Daemascus]

Intresting, Portal out sold Fallout: New Vegas on Steam.

 

[LightOfDarkness]

Is that counting retail sales? It should be if it isn't. Could be missing a hundred million.

 

[omicron1]

Here we go...

OT: I'm glad Metro 2033 sold so well that was one of my favorite shooters of recent memory...<.<

Can we take the question mark off Duke yet?


On topic: That's a lot of million-sellers on that list. Portal, years after release and retailing for $15 at this point; Left 4 Dead 2, probably around a million copies this year, considering sales; Black Ops, about 1.5 million copies. (fie! but anyway...) Modern Warfare 2, still selling for $60 because Activision are greedy, managed about half a million sales.

And then there's the games that sold large numbers of copies across multiple platforms, not just Steam - if we consider Steam to be 1/3 of the total PC sales for a given game (for the sake of discussion; it's probably a good bit less than 1/3), we have at least 1.5 million for Bad Company 2 and Civilization 5, and 1 million (give or take) for Metro 2033, New Vegas, and Mafia II.

And considering that the active population for Steam tends to hover around 3 million gamers (which, considering Steam's always-on nature, can be considered Steam's "audience"), having a 1/2 adoption rate for any game is very, very significant indeed.


Edit: If this is what I think it is, it's a representation of how much money games sold on steam made, not games activated on steam. This gives some perspective to things like DoWII:CR's apparent 1/3-million sales count.

 

[Baradiel]

Not too bad at all. Just out of interest, if Steam is the third largest publisher, who is the second? EA? Activision?

Steam doesn't publish anything. Valve is the third-largest publisher on the PC. And yea, I'd assume EA and Activision are the first two. My best guess is that Activision is at number one if only for WoW, followed by EA, then Valve.

Yeah, I meant Valve, but thanks for clarifying.

 

[fisk0]

Here we go...

OT: I'm glad Metro 2033 sold so well that was one of my favorite shooters of recent memory...<.<

Isn't 1985 pushing it a little? Didn't the "PC gaming is dying" thing start around the end of the N64/PSX generation?

And, well, the PC is and will most certainly remain the leading platform for indie games, especially considering last year's hits Minecraft and Amnesia. Frictional Games said this about the dying platform and if they should start making games for consoles instead: "If online sales figures continue like they have with Amnesia, there is actually not any reason for us to release to anything but PC."