Audiosurf Ruled in February

[CSN NewsBot]

Valve just sent out a little press release about how much ass Audiosurf kicked in February.

Audiosurf, the innovative and award-winning title that allows gamers to "ride their music," topped the February sales charts for dollars and units sold via Steam, a leading online platform for the distribution and management of PC games with over 15 million accounts worldwide.



In addition to outselling The Orange Box, Counter-Strike, and hundreds of other great games available via Steam, the month of February also delivered numerous awards and top reviews to Audiosurf's solo author, Dylan Fitterer.

And you just know he's rolling around on a mountain of cash right now.

[Diamond Dust]

Seriously this is why steam is a great thing, a small budget game like this can get huge attention.

[MrBosnia]

Well said Diamond Dust. In a few years we may actually start seeing Steam slowly start monopolizing the game industry - I'm not joking. There are just too many benefits for 3rd party and professional developers alike to not join the program.

[Thortok2000]

Other game delivery platforms have been tried and failed.



The only reason Steam even has an edge is because of Counterstrike, and to a lesser extent, other Valve games. Then, like an avalanche, other big names got on the bus and it's gathering speed. But it would not have started if not for Counterstrike.

[Diamond Dust]

Thortok2000 wrote..

Other game delivery platforms have been tried and failed.



The only reason Steam even has an edge is because of Counterstrike, and to a lesser extent, other Valve games. Then, like an avalanche, other big names got on the bus and it's gathering speed. But it would not have started if not for Counterstrike.

Well valve made half-life and without half-life there is no CS, and if valve didn't buy CS then it wouldn't have grown as fast. Valve knows games and they know the business connected to them and I think thats why steam has done well.

[LMN8R]

Yup - Valve deserves as much credit for recognizing talent (CS, DoD, Portal, etc.) as the original creators get for creating their ideas. Any big company can buy up developers, but it takes incredible talent to allow those developers to keep doing what they do best. The fact that they smartly used the success of these games to drive Steam into being what it is today only adds to how much they deserve their success.

[Thortok2000]

Half-life, Portal, etc. That's what I meant by 'other Valve games'.



But it was basically Counterstrike as the #1 online multiplayer game that did it. Remember when Steam first came out? Everyone hated it, hated the concept, hated the necessity, and many stayed with 1.5 until the very last moment when the WON network turned off. I didn't, so I guess I should say most instead of everyone, but there's still a lot of people that just don't like Steam.



I was there when Steam began (I have one of the shortest SteamID's of anyone I know), and I remember. You know how much hate the CS community is able to channel at 'stupid' Valve decisions. I've never seen the community hate anything more than they hated Steam (at the time).



It's come a long way, though, and is now a working product without the bugs it had back then. Especially with the addition of Steam Community, it can actually interact with the game to some extent (like your icon showing up in game in TF2).



However, I still strongly believe that it owes its success to CS. I guess the second strongest game it would owe success to is Halflife 2. But mostly CS. If it hadn't been for CS, it would have been a lot harder for Steam to 'take off' and attract game developers (and mod developers) in the way that it has.