Valve Software sent word today that its digital PC gaming platform Steam has grown 25% in the last year. There are now over 25 million accounts on Steam, and 10 million of those are also registered for the Steam community. Valve also said its peak number of concurrent users eclipsed the 2.5 million mark during the month of December; that pushed Steam's average monthly player minutes to more than 13 billion.
The studio noted that its Steamworks suite of publishing services saw "tremendous adoption... in the tangible and electronic versions of many of the year's biggest releases," such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Dawn of War II, and Empire: Total War. Steam now has over 1,000 games from over 100 developers and publishers around the world. Impressively, unit sales for 2009 increased by more than 205%. Valve said that it's the fifth straight year the platform has realized over 100% year-over-year growth in unit sales.
"Steam turned five years old in March 2009," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "With the introduction of each new platform feature released over the years -- such as the Steam Community, Steam Cloud, and Steamworks -- we've seen corresponding growth in account numbers, concurrent player numbers and developer support for the platform. As such, 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."
There has been some controversy surrounding Steam in recent months, thanks to Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford continually blasting Valve's service. Developers have come to Steam's defense, however. Gabe Newell will be honored at the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards with the Pioneer Award.
