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Steam Reaches 13 Million Users
Gamasutra is reporting that Valve's PC game download service Steam has reached 13 million users. The company's offering has 150 movies and games on offer. "Looking further at its stats, Valve says Steam sees over 7 billion player minutes a month, and has served over 2,500 updates to its titles since its first release. Valve also says that summer will see new announcements from more publishers bringing their games to Steam ... Said Valve president Gabe Newell, 'We've approached the development of Steam the same way we treat our online games; we release something we've tested, we internalize the feedback, and then we release new features and functionality based upon the feedback received. In the past year, we've added over 100 new titles from third parties ... This growth has taught us a lot and inspired many additional features and services that we'll be releasing later this year.'"
Not covered here are their plans to create an XBox Live Gold type of service later this year - without the fee. Oh, and don't forgoet about EP2, TF2, and Portal.
Add all that to how successful and powerful Steam has become, and I'd say times are pretty damn good at Valve right now...
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
The half life collection I bought years ago came with three valid half life 1 cd keys. So I have three steam accounts. How many do you have?
Steam beats playing the "find the latest patch" game. Not to mention the with server browser I can view ALL servers for ALL GoldSource/Source games I have, instead of having to pick which game I want to play FIRST and then checking the servers from in-game. Friends finally works now, which is itself neat since it integrates with GoldSource and Source so nicely.
Lastly it serves as a convenient launcher menu if nothing else.
I like it. When I reformat my computer, it's hit-or-miss which games I reinstall. Basically, whatever CDs I have handy, I might toss in. Except for my Steam games. I install the Steam client, spend 5 minutes getting all the downloads started, and a few hours later there are my games. I've never had a problem with it.
I wonder how many subscriberse WoW has, it was 7 Million in August, I'm guessing it has grown since then. Now I wonder if Blizzard is going to launch something similar to Steam, they sure have the user base to support it. And competition is badly needed, Steam has become alot better the last years, but an alternative would be great.
I like the idea with buying online, it's so damn fast and gratifying. You can just get the game without searching for cracks and stuff. I've bought Half Life 2 on a whim, it's wonderfull for casual and non gamers.
I would love to buy ordinary programs this way as well.
I've never understood the whole mothership fear thing. All it does is check for updates, it's not like you can remove a purchased game from your account (you can delete local content, ie. the stuff on your computer, but the server side account record still shows that you are entitled to that game) so it's not authenticating your ownership or anything (that's why even 3rd party mod stuff triggers it; it checks for update entries for 'mod z' sees none and continues on.) What with the fear? Is it a fear of something hidden? A fear of loss of control? Or is it some fear/anger I don't understand, like dial-up?
Demented But Determined.
So they didn't set up a security question, they lost their email access, changed their drivers licenses, and closed their credit cards? At the same time?
Are you sure your friend is the same actual person every year?
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.