Steam Reaches 13 Million Users

Gamasutra is reporting that Valve's PC game download service Steam has reached 13 million users. The company's offering has 150 movies and games on offer. "Looking further at its stats, Valve says Steam sees over 7 billion player minutes a month, and has served over 2,500 updates to its titles since its first release. Valve also says that summer will see new announcements from more publishers bringing their games to Steam ... Said Valve president Gabe Newell, 'We've approached the development of Steam the same way we treat our online games; we release something we've tested, we internalize the feedback, and then we release new features and functionality based upon the feedback received. In the past year, we've added over 100 new titles from third parties ... This growth has taught us a lot and inspired many additional features and services that we'll be releasing later this year.'"

Plus:

[Southpaw018]

Not covered here are their plans [computeran...ogames.com] to create an XBox Live Gold type of service later this year - without the fee. Oh, and don't forgoet about EP2, TF2, and Portal.

Add all that to how successful and powerful Steam has become, and I'd say times are pretty damn good at Valve right now...

Re:how many of those users approve of steam?

[The MAZZTer]

Steam beats playing the "find the latest patch" game. Not to mention the with server browser I can view ALL servers for ALL GoldSource/Source games I have, instead of having to pick which game I want to play FIRST and then checking the servers from in-game. Friends finally works now, which is itself neat since it integrates with GoldSource and Source so nicely.

Lastly it serves as a convenient launcher menu if nothing else.

Re:Steam vs. WoW

[Dr. Eggman]

Steam will be distributing ATI drivers soon [gamesindustry.biz]. (see "How would you sum up the current state of the Steam business?" question)

The rest of the two part interview is quite interesting as well.