It’s a Gas: Steam Rockets Past 30 Million User Milestone, Other Absurd Stats
It’s a Gas: Steam Rockets Past 30 Million User Milestone, Other Absurd Stats
Posted 10/18/2010 at 8:00pm
| by Nathan Grayson
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When you can boast that your product is the size of two-and-a-half World of Warcrafts, it’s pretty much a guarantee that any numbers you put out will make all the other numbers feel so small and inadequate that only the purchase of a big car or remarriage to a disproportionately young spouse will make up for it. So, with that said, grab a cushion, because your jaw is about to make a crater in your floor.
In the past year alone, Valve’s ubiquitous download service has seen a 178 percent growth spurt in its userbase, bringing its total tally up to more than 30 million. Sales, meanwhile, have jumped up a whopping 200 percent, which probably means Valve can afford to add an aircraft runway to its complementary employee party yacht package. The publisher’s also beaming with pride over its infrastructure, which now runs at 400Gps. According to Valve, that’s enough to “ship a digitized version of the Oxford English Dictionary 92.6 times per second.”
Yeah, uh, your jaw crater? It’s getting a little drool-filled. You might want to clean that up.
"Steam is on track to record the biggest year in its six year history," said Valve president Gabe Newell. "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."
Remember back when Steam first launched, and everyone thought it was gonna be a total flop? Well, consider this Valve’s official response: “Hahahahahaha [sounds of giddy skipping in the direction of a bank].”
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SpockFive
October 20, 2010 at 1:29am
I wonder how dose that compare to the subscriber count of xbox live. I'd ask how it compared to the psn too but we all know that would be a total crapshoot because of the people that have multiple accounts.
someuid
October 19, 2010 at 1:54pm
I love steam and use it for all my games. If it isn't on Steam, I pass on it. There are obvious exceptions, like SC2 (which I haven't picked up yet) but that can be downloaded as well.
Physical media just doesn't have a place in my life anymore when it comes to games.
However, this line scares me: "to develop the platform to offer more marketing". The last thing I need are marketting people overrunning my clean, smooth on-line buying process. I hope Steam keeps them at bay and I don't get slammed over and over and over again with useless news, ads, 'specials', etc. And I hope they stay the frick out of my games.
Havok
October 19, 2010 at 11:10am
I only buy my games via Steam now. Sure, if my computer needs a reformat and I need to re-download them all my ISP bill will be through the roof, but who wants to need a disc each time you want to play a game? Not to mention the dollars saved.
I only buy games at retail stores for my Wii, and so far, in the past year, that's only been Metroid: Other M.
Nyarlathotep
October 19, 2010 at 8:17am
I remember downloading Steam on dial up for the first time. It was such a big download it took like six hours and my connection would always get dropped before it finished. I think I had to try again about four times before I got it. My first multiplayer experiences were Counter Strike and Team Fortress. The first multiplayer game I really got addicted to was the Day of Defeat mod. I regularly played Day of Defeat through all of it's iterations up until Left 4 Dead came out although I did get distracted by the Battlefield series too. It's only been within the last couple years that I stopped buying games at retail stores and have purchased everything through Steam.
lunchbox73
October 19, 2010 at 6:20am
I love Steam. I only wish they sold cheap Ugg boots, designer jeans, shoes, jewelry. There are no places online to buy such products at reasonable prices.
Ghok
October 19, 2010 at 5:03am
One of the reasons Steam is so great is because buying PC games at a retail store just means you're going to get a disc you have to install, perhaps with some bad DRM on it. It's not much of a choice. If there were better options, I doubt I'd use Steam as much. That said, I am always buying things on Steam now, certainly it's the main way I purchase games. It's a great service, and much better than how it was when it first started.
Jesterace
October 19, 2010 at 5:37am
Some games you buy at retail are steam games, Bought Kane & Lynch and Just Cause 2 because they were pretty cheap at Futureshop. When I got home and to install they ended up being steam games. Which I don't mind, they were cheaper on disc than they actually were on steam. Saved $20 per game, also if I lose the discs or damage them I can always redownload from steam or restore a backup. Not to mention the convenience of getting games rather than driving to a store on the release date etc.. Fallout New Vegas was preloaded and ready to go when I woke up this morning.
igoka
October 18, 2010 at 10:20pm
I just would like to say that if I need the game I use Steam . Steam has changed my view how to buy game easy way . I forgot when the last time I bought the game from the store .
joeking
October 18, 2010 at 9:50pm
Yes, I do remember. Most everyone hated Steam when it first came out, myself included. Not only was the platform buggy, the update it brought to "Counter-Strike" (one of the only games at that time) was buggy as well. Since CS was massively popular back then, you had a lot of angry players blaming Steam and Valve for all of life's problems.
Fast-forward seven years later, I can't imagine what life would be like without Steam. Probably extremely boring. I've met dozens of friends on Steam, some of which I had a chance to meet and frag with IRL. It's also allowed me to download games directly and without manual patching. This saves me time and money, not having to drive to the local "Game Shop" for example. I don't think anyone will disagree that Steam is one of the greatest, most important software releases of this decade.
allantang
October 19, 2010 at 12:09am
Agreed. The only reason to have Steam was for CS... I have a gif somewhere with a joke update process of Steam back then, from iga.
But Steam has come a long way since then and its pretty damn good!
COMMANDER_COOK
October 18, 2010 at 8:31pm
Is it 400GBps or 400Gbps? Wish Valve would fix that typo.
Nice touch on that last tag.
nmanguy
October 18, 2010 at 11:32pm
I'd say Gbps, since the lil' b is for data transfer and the big B for storage. Otherwise I'd have an 8 Gb hard drive and 3 MB/s internet.
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