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Valve has just announced that Steam now has over 30 million active accounts. According to this lovely PR sheet, that is a year-over-year growth of 178% for new users. Additionally, peak simultaneous player counts surpass 3 million, with over six million unique gamers accessing the digital distribution platform each day.
It's a numbers game, baby!
In addition to new user growth, Steam sales during the trailing 12 months increased by more than 200%, putting it on track for a sixth straight year of realizing over 100% year-over-year growth in unit sales. To meet this demand, the Steam infrastructure has been increased and now has ability to run at 400Gps, enough bandwidth to ship a digitized version of the Oxford English Dictionary 92.6 times per second.
The period also realized continued adoption of the Steamworks suite of publishing services in tangible and electronic versions of today's popular games. Included in many of the year's biggest releases -- such as Sid Meier's Civilization V, Just Cause 2, and R.U.S.E., with more to come during the holiday season -- Steamworks has now shipped in over 200 since the suite of services was released two years ago. In addition, the Steam Cloud (introduced in Spring 2008) has surpassed the 100 million files saved milestone.
"Steam is on track to record the biggest year in its six year history," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "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."
The period also realized continued adoption of the Steamworks suite of publishing services in tangible and electronic versions of today's popular games. Included in many of the year's biggest releases -- such as Sid Meier's Civilization V, Just Cause 2, and R.U.S.E., with more to come during the holiday season -- Steamworks has now shipped in over 200 since the suite of services was released two years ago. In addition, the Steam Cloud (introduced in Spring 2008) has surpassed the 100 million files saved milestone.
"Steam is on track to record the biggest year in its six year history," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "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."
It's a numbers game, baby!
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