Steam Rakes In Almost $1 Billion in 2010

Makes sense, I much prefer to sit on my ass and click download than have to endure the anguish of going to the store.

hahahaha Well said "applegetsmelaid" Hilarious ! ^.

Some of these games are pretty abysmal. DOW2, COD, yikes.

The B&M stores only carry the big titles, and thats it. Not only does steam carry them as well, but they also carry many older and indie titles. Add in the sales that steam has, and there is little reason to even consider going to the stores. (I got L4D2 on new years eve for 66% off, or $6.80.)

Edit: I forgot to mention perhaps the best part of steam. Put your steam folder on a different drive/partition then your OS, and you don't have to worry about losing your games when you reformat/upgrade windows. You can drag that steam folder around at will, and you don't have to stop and reinstall your games. I've moved my steam folder 3 times now, and you just double click steam.exe, it updates itself really quick, and you're back in business. I wish all my other games didn't need to be installed.

Steam is great when they're on sale...

some of the older titles go for under $10...

and many go for 25% to 75% off as well...

I picked so many games on last Christmas sale and some of the weekend deals past couple of months in 2011...

last game I got was Penny Arcade Episode 1 and 2 for $3!

And who said PC gaming was dead?

I about 160 games on steam and its just super nice to not have deal with putting the disk in the computer to install or worse PLAY the game. If I feel like playing something and it isn't installed yet I just hit download and go play something else for 30 minutes or watch a movie. I don't have to go searching around through storage to locate the case and then keep swapping disks or find that they are scratched beyond use and have to buy a new copy. It just makes sense. Then when you throw on support for in game chat as well as easy server joining with your friends its unbeatable.

With those numbers, PC gaming will be around for a very long time. Got a little worried with all those articles and forum posts about it being dead or dying.

Gamestop employees turned me to steam, with their attitudes and general retardedness. I never looked back. PLUS, with games on steam, I feel that the publishers take better care of their titles to provide updates to their games. I feel confident that if it's on steam, it's going to work.

And the ability to download the game you own anytime you want and sometimes the price beat the crap out of stores. I'm looking at you Office Depot!!!

Hmm, none of the top ten games are in my list and I have over 50 Steam games...

This proves once again why Valve could afford Valve time,
They basically make more cash running steam, than selling their own games

I;m not a fan of CoD at all, and I preferred the original L4D. Battlefield was a good investment however. Plenty of wasted hours there. I got it when it was $50, but if you paid close attention, not long ago it was on sale for $6.80 (or something close to that).

While Steam most certainly isn't perfect, it beats the hell out of losing old CDs and serial keys. Instead, you just have to worry about getting your account banned/stolen etc.

I do wish however they would state some critical aspects such as a game not supporting widescreen, or the game is locked at 1024x768, maybe even just a little hint when you buy an online game that the total server population is 0 etc.
I have to run cracks on several of my Steam games just to even use them properly.

I'm getting addicted to Steam. I've got to say that I rather enjoy the service (also the fact that it is not geographically limited).

The strong Canadian dollar (relative to the US dollar) makes buying games extremely inexpensive (compared to how much EB Games or Future shop/Best Buy charge).

Steam is Awesome, I can totally confirm that when the December sales happened I snagged a total value of $300 in games for like $50

That was exactly my thought. Every week an article is posted somewhere about how PC gaming is going the way of the dodo. Usually it's blamed on piracy. Almost a billion dollars!

192 games and counting on Steam. Damn them and their cool looking indie titles and awesome sales.

"Oh I'll play it some time, and it's only $5!!".... yea right.

Awesome service though.

Steam name Tava... with the Mario mushroom as my picture.

NOW BRING US SOME GODDAMN GOOD GAMES FOR PC :@:@:@:@:@

Very true. They are either jerks that could care less if you buy a game or not, thieves (swipe games from young kids that are trying to sell them back and sell them for themselves), or creepy as all get out.

wtb a steam client for linux!

Steam for Linux would be the best thing to ever happen to Linux, Wine is crap to play games on.

Good for them!

I've been VERY IMPRESSED with Steam:
- Automatic updates
- Can BACKUP games or the ENTIRE FOLDER
- Great SALES
- Awesome Interface
- allows MODS
- can LOGON with a different PC

I used to prefer buying DISCS, but now I'll only buy a game on STEAM. They are the ONLY ones doing a truly great job. Others like Microsoft Games, D2D etc fail in many different ways.

STEAM is Digital Downloading done RIGHT!!!

"Steam for Linux and OSX"

While Steam is going to OSX and Linux you will NOT see very many games making this transition. The reason for this is DirectX which is Microsoft code. Additionally you have to tweak drivers as well but the real difficulty is DX9/10/11.

I don't see Linux ever taking off although we may see a couple games working on it.

If you are going to GAME on the PC it make most sense to do it through Windows and Linux/OSX users can easily dual boot.

Of course we'll all be digital in 5 years.... probably even less.

PC gaming needs a steam competitor in order to thrive again (90's). cheaters modders and hackers are why i am apprehensive to dive back in to gaming. The love for all things half life and counter strike turned me off in the 90's(quake head and ID fanboi)I am in the process of building an i7 2600k machine... even now i can't stand COD black ops, MW2 with ID's engine is far superior...

This argument has no validity. Half Life 2, Portal, and the Left 4 Dead series are all on Mac right now and they run on DX9. If the limiting factor were in fact Microsoft's code and they were being stingy about it, those games would never have made the transition to Mac.

A more limiting factor would be the drivers. Steam must have to emulate a Windows environment or something because games are designed to be compatible to a wide range of hardware but if the driver structure is different then it would encounter problems.

I stopped going to GameStop when the PC section shrunk to a small rack. Are retailers at all surprised we turned to online services like Steam? They chased US away with their attitude.

I feel the same way you do with going to GS. The PC rack is WAY too small and when you ask about a PC game they give you a the same dumbass look they always do. Steam is so much better than going to the store and having to store all those discs. I have about 30 games on steam and about 10 additional that I have boxes for. Yep, I am done buying the boxes so they can sit on my self and serve no real purpose.

I love Valve. I love Steam. I love that their DRM is so light. I love that they don't care how many PC's I install my games on. I love the store, the community and everything else. I think almost any PC gamer in his/her right mind loves Steam. But unfortunately, they're not the ultimate solution for me when it comes to buying and installing all my games. The one problem with digital distribution is that many of us have monthly caps on how much we're allowed to download/upload, and that makes purchasing a new game from Steam, near or at the end of the month, a very risky proposition indeed; with no indication of what the file's size will be, and no clue whether or not it will cause us to go over our limit, those of us in this situation will more often just decide to forgo the pleasure. My ISP allows me 20GB/month total DL and UL, and it's very easy to blow through that, especially when you have an entire family that's using the net. Many of you may not know that the broadband industry as a whole is trying VERY hard to move towards a low cap/high overage business model; they've oversold their capacity in so many markets, and rather than spend the money on increasing that capacity, they'd rather reduce the throughput of their subscribed customers and also pull in a little extra coin by hitting people with overage fees. Many analysts believe it's inevitable that we'll all be on short leashes in a few more years. I hope not, but if that does happen, services like Steam won't be doing so well anymore, and we might see a resurgence of the physical media format.

Actually the HL2 engine is not exclusively DX9. There are many effects that were introduced in DX9 that are now available in OpenGL, which is what OSX runs in. There is no emulation whatsoever. What has to happen in order for a Windows game to be ported to Mac is that the engine has to have compatability with OpenGL. So yes, everyone is correct in that DX9/10/11 is the limiting factor with many games not being ported to Mac, since the two API's function quite differently on many levels.

Now for the article at hand:

Digital distribution becoming the almost exclusive means of obtaining software is much more realistic situation on PC than on consoles due to the large hard drives available, lack of shelf space given in retail stores, and the lack of ability to resell your games (nobody allows PC trade-ins anymore). Consoles, not so much, since most users never swap out HDD's (there is only 1 console that supports such an upgrade), there is a large amount of shelf space given at retail, and the fact you can trade your games in for cash or credit, which would not be possible in a digital distribution situation.

Personally, I don't buy discs anymore. I've gotten tired of losing shelf space, worrying about wear and tear, or even oxidation of the discs causing them to no longer function (and yes, CD's do expire). I also love the fact I don't have to haul around a CD binder when I travel to keep my collection with me.

Now if you don't have a fast connection for whatever reason (sharing 1 connection w/ roomates, live w/ parents and they don't want to shell out for a faster connection, can't afford it, etc) it can get painful to download a new title, but you can usually find something else to do while you wait.

All in all, I've never believed the "PC gaming is dying" myth. People have been saying it for years, and I've yet to see any signs that the claim has actual merit. There are always over 1 million users logged on to Steam at any time of day, and there are plenty of classic games that still have active communities and servers running.