Friday, July 7th 2017
A Steamroller Among PC Games Stores: Steam Increases Growth, Updates Incoming
In an internal presentation, Valve, the company which simply won't give us Half Life 3, made a pretty interesting presentation on its growth and plans for the future. During the independent games showcase Indigo 2017, which took place in the Netherlands this past June, Steam revealed it had achieved a record 14 million concurrent users, up from a 2015 peak of (comparatively) just 8.4 million. Some other interesting statistics include an average of 33 million daily active players; 67 million monthly active players; and around 26 million gamers who made new purchases since January 2016.
North America seems to represent the bulk of Steam sales, with around 34% of sales through the market occurring way over that side of the ocean. Next comes Western Europe, with 29% of the sales pie, followed by Asia, which achieves a grand total of 17%. Next come the Russian Territories, Oceania and Latin America, which account for 5%, 4%, and 3% respectively. We'll just assume the remaining 8% come from Eastern Europe, the African Continent, and those researchers in Antarctica. Jokes aside, this shows monumental growth for the company, which should only increase provided the continued growth of the PC gaming market. Steam certainly has features games appreciate already - the growth speaks strongly for this. So now Valve only has to not ruin it, and keep on adding incremental features.
Of these, Valve is looking to introduce a revised UI, improve game access in its interface and make it easier for users to launch their most recently played games. Valve will also look into making it clear which games in your library are showing player activity, so you won't ever have to lay around empty multiplayer queues. Some quality of life improvements for curators and reviewers are also in the works. Check out the rest of the slides below.
Sources:
SteamCN, Gaming on Linux
North America seems to represent the bulk of Steam sales, with around 34% of sales through the market occurring way over that side of the ocean. Next comes Western Europe, with 29% of the sales pie, followed by Asia, which achieves a grand total of 17%. Next come the Russian Territories, Oceania and Latin America, which account for 5%, 4%, and 3% respectively. We'll just assume the remaining 8% come from Eastern Europe, the African Continent, and those researchers in Antarctica. Jokes aside, this shows monumental growth for the company, which should only increase provided the continued growth of the PC gaming market. Steam certainly has features games appreciate already - the growth speaks strongly for this. So now Valve only has to not ruin it, and keep on adding incremental features.
21 Comments on A Steamroller Among PC Games Stores: Steam Increases Growth, Updates Incoming
However, I wonder what percentage of that money will be used for improving the sub-par (and I use the term very generously ) support, introducing some kind of quality control for Steam Direct, and creating a PR department so that there is communication between the company and its users.
Zero percent? Zero is a percent, right?
Because their automated machine response "support" is good enough?
Because they don't want quality control since that would actually reduce revenue (more crap sold = more m0n3yz)?
Because there is no need for a PR department because Valve doesn't want to communicate or care about its users' feedback?
[rant about HL3]
And I'm not mentioning Half-Life 3 because I've given up that we will ever see it. After all, game development requires time, resources, effort, and passion, and Valve doesn't want to invest the first three due to a severe lack of the fourth.
Getting money by selling other people's creations (games, cosmetics) is a much, much more profitable endeavor, not to mention easier, as it requires but a fraction of the aforementioned time, resources and effort.
Developing games sounds like work! Yuck!
[/rant about HL3]
Pretty demanding games that need beefy GPUs to run xD
/irony off
www.tweaktown.com/articles/8189/playerunknowns-battlegrounds-benchmarked-cpu-gpu-war/index5.html
CSGO is preferably played at 150+fps, needs a solid PC for that as well. Not too new, but with some horsepower.
Dota 2 is the only one that can run on potato PCs.
Please do some research before posting crap.
1366 x 768
21.69%
-0.62%
1440 x 900
4.29%
+0.01%
That's already a quarter of your playerbase right there. 49% is on 1080p and if I remember right about 39% has two 1080p panels next to each other, but they game on one of them.
CPU speeds show that the vast majority has nowhere near enough clock to run high FPS
2.3 Ghz to 2.69 Ghz
19.38%
+0.10%
Now, VRAM...
1024 MB
31.13%
-0.61%
2047 MB
24.68%
+0.68%
512 MB
5.68%
-0.35%
60% has VRAM none of us would consider sufficient for maxed out 1080p. So who has more than 2 GB? Let's be amazed together shall we
3071 MB
2.87%
+0.69%
4095 MB -- GTX 970
10.95%
+1.75%
4096 MB
1.57%
-0.81%
6143 MB -- GTX 1060, 980ti
3.67%
+0.71%
6144 MB
0.64%
-0.29%
8191 MB
4.22%
+0.68%
8192 MB
0.59%
-0.38%
i'll hazard a guess... could it be true that the vast majority doesn't give a rats ass about maxed out 1080p? And actually plays whatever they can play even if they get 15 fps or forced to run at low/medium?
Yup.
Yup.
I see the graph wizards are at it again.
Is 2009 1, 10, 50, 5000? Nobody knows :D.
but yeah, the chart is kinds pants xD
And as for this year
finance.yahoo.com/news/ea-release-first-quarter-fiscal-200500490.html
I think it's a good thing that EA/Ubi have their own store platforms though. Even if I don't like them much as companies.