Number of Steam accounts hits 25m

By Ellie Gibson Published 1 February, 2010

Download service sets new records.

Valve has announced that over 25 million people now own Steam accounts, while 10 million users also have Steam Community profiles.

2009 was a bumper year for Steam - the number of account holders rose by 25 per cent and in December, the number of concurrent users peaked at 2.5 million. Average monthly player minutes now stand at more than 13 billion.

On top of all that unit sales rose by 205 per cent last year. Steam now offers more than 1000 games from over 100 developers and publishers.

"We plan to continue to expand and grow the platform to better serve the developers supporting the open platform and millions of gamers logging in each day," said Valve president Gabe Newell.

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About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • UncleLou #1 2 years ago

    Average monthly player minutes now stand at more than 13 billion.

    What a fantastically grotesque waste of time, if you put it like that! :)

  • Tomo #2 2 years ago

    Dollah.

  • matrim83 #3 2 years ago

    Good for them. Its an excellent service and I hope more games integrate it. I hope they also start releasing Steam sales figures.

  • superjag86 #4 2 years ago

    13 billion minutes per month is equivalent to 25,000 YEARS played per month...!

  • Aretak #5 2 years ago

    As awesome as Steam is, the problem with it is that I'm loathe to buy anything from it for full price. For two reasons:

    1) It's usually more expensive than a boxed copy (in the UK anyway).
    2) You know nearly everything will end up in one of their ridiculously-good sales eventually and you'll be able to get it for tuppence ha'penny.

  • lunnytoon #6 2 years ago

    MW2 probably has a lot to do with 2009's figures on top of L4D2.

    Steam is a good service, i just wish the UI was a little more appealing to the eye as i find it quite drab to look at but maybe thats just me.

  • bad09 #7 2 years ago

    Go Steam! Good on 'em it's a fantastic service.

    / waits for midweek deal

  • JHuxley #8 2 years ago

    @Aretak

    Agreed, although the second point is exactly why I love Steam.

    That and the convenience.

  • Darren #9 2 years ago

    I'm surprised Steam is so popular to be honest unless most of those 25 million users are outside of the UK.

    Sure, it is great for the cheap weekend bargain but their new release prices are an utter disgrace IMO (£40 for a new PC game?!?!?). As such I will never buy a new release from them when I can get a boxed version (which acts as a backup copy) with a manual for £5 to £15 less online.

  • JamieR #10 2 years ago

    I like the idea behind steam but it dose need some serous improvements and bug fixes and the software is by far one of the ugliest on my computer but i wont by pc games anywhere else now i like em all in the one place.

  • etherfiend #11 2 years ago

    The figures don't really mean anything, any game that decides to integrate Steam forces you do register and activate a Steam account. I am a Steam account holder and sadly it wasn't really through choice but only because I wanted to play DoW2 and TW:Empire.

    Boasting about however many accounts you have acquired isn't an achievement when there is no other option of playing/activating a game.

  • sneetch #12 2 years ago

    To the people complaining about the price: they charge the RRP for new games, this is not news nor is it their decision. The price is up to the publishers and it's not unique to Steam it's the way digital delivery works and is going to continue to work. If it was up to Steam they'd sell new games for €20 and make a fortune on volume.

    I don't like paying more than I have to but recently I've been increasingly tempted by their preorders, the price I pay in shops is these days €40 to €45 Steam pre-orders tend to be about €45 with some special edition nonsense. When you factor in not having to travel to pick it up or pay for parking the difference is quite low.

  • IneptPercy #13 2 years ago

    I also never buy new releases as I can just get the disc online cheaper and without wasting my bandwidth. (AVP2 £17.99@play and it will just install on steam anyway)

    With that I have picked games up in the sales recently and love it for that.

    I must say I installed it a while ago for the orange box and never looked at it, its when I got my 5850 with a Dirt 2 steam activation I started looking again.

  • bad09 #14 2 years ago

    I must admit anything over £30 gets an automatic "can I unlock a retail disc or should I wait for price reduction" from me. I shouldn't be paying more than bricks/mortar/manual/box/disc etc. but if it's under 30 notes I can just about live with it....just.

    Mind you, as good as £25 is I can't resist following IneptPercy to play with the wicked £17.99 AvP. Retail unlock FTW! :)
    Edited by 1 at 01/02/10 @ 14:38

  • sneetch #15 2 years ago

    @IneptPercy
    I must say I installed it a while ago for the orange box and never looked at it, its when I got my 5850 with a Dirt 2 steam activation I started looking again.

    I got the exact same deal with my 5850 (Sapphire card?) I was a bit peeved that they didn't include a disk with the game. I haven't been bothered adding it to Steam.

  • hiddenranbir #16 2 years ago

    The figures don't really mean anything, any game that decides to integrate Steam forces you do register and activate a Steam account. I am a Steam account holder and sadly it wasn't really through choice but only because I wanted to play DoW2 and TW:Empire.

    Boasting about however many accounts you have acquired isn't an achievement when there is no other option of playing/activating a game.

    +1

    In general I congratulate Steam. Delivery service is great aside from steamworks which locks a game to one service. It is like an exclusivity deal that is permanent.

  • IneptPercy #17 2 years ago

    Yeah I got my code with a sapphire card, got to say I just input the code clicked download, while I was waiting I had a look and got GTA IV for £4.99, audio surf for £1.49 and Outrun 2006 for £1.24.

    I just went out for the day and left it all downloading.

    It is a great game so worth the download, but like you did feel a bit ripped off there wasn't just a disc. But the pack was made before its release.

  • Pablo2k5 #18 2 years ago

    Steam ROCKS :)