Valve’s supremely popular distribution platform Steam has more users than some countries have people.
The platform has over 125 million active accounts according to Valve, which is greater than the population of places like Mexico, Egypt, Germany, and France.
Heck, it’s almost as big as Japan – 126 million people.
If you assume that every Steam user buys one full-release title a year (which is a completely unrealistic an absolutely minimalist idea), that’s about $6.5 billion.
Valve reportedly takes a minimum of 30% from game sales through Steam, which is a comfortable $2 billion for the company.
Like we said, that’s a minimal outlook. With massive releases almost every month and sales happening throughout the year, gamers fork out way more than $50 on Steam in one year.
No wonder the great Gaben is estimated to be worth billions.
Dominating current-gen gaming
Top put Steam’s user figures into perspective, let’s look at the rest of the gaming industry.
If you’re a PC gamer and want to feel a little bit more elitist, you’ll be delighted to know only two consoles have ever surpassed the 120 million unit mark.
The Nintendo DS has sold over 154 million units since 2004, and the current crown-holder for top-selling console – the PlayStation 2 – is sitting pretty at over 155 million.
And no one really plays on those anymore. Do they?
Steam vs the rest
Total PS4 sales are approaching 19 million, with the PS3’s sales sitting at around 83 million. So Steam trumps Sony there.
Total Xbox One sales are over 10 million, and the Xbox 360 moved 84 million units – so, again, PC gaming comes out on top.
With the Nintendo Wii hitting over 100 million sales, and the Wii U chugging along at about 9 million, Steam is even beating the grand-daddy of gaming (though perhaps not when comparing the company’s hand-held figures, which are over 200 million with the NDS and 3DS).
So, assuming that Steam is a fairly accurate measure of the PC gaming community at large, it’s definitely up there as one of the largest.
Steam vs Nintendo vs PS vs Xbox
For a little bit of sobering perspective, in 2014 Apple hit its 500 millionth iPhone sold and Android devices outstrip that figure two-fold.
We’re not saying that everyone who owns an iPhone plays games on it, of course, but with well over 50 billion app downloads the numbers speak for themselves.
More on Steam
SA vs the world: best countries to be a Steam gamer
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Hmmm I am impressed.. somewhat, but I do also think at least half of those are DOTA/ Team Fortress/ CS:GO farmers and scammers. Every other day I get a request from some Level 0 steam user, who is presumably one of those con-artists wanting to see if I’m stupid enough to part with any of my real-world value items. (Remember kids, we block anyone we don’t know and whose accounts are private, stay safe!). I think honestly though even if only 30 million of those accounts are attached to real players who are spending real money it’s good news, because the old publisher argument that PC is dead and every one just pirates the games doesn’t apply and they can maybe considering giving us a bit more attention. The reality is that this gen the consoles are already on the back foot in terms of power and even price. You can spend R6500 on a PC that will match a consoles power (the R7 260x 2gig OC card is your friend here, almost identical specs to the consoles) or you can spend more and get more power. In three years time these consoles will be so far behind a mid-level PC, unlike previous gens where the consoles were more powerful than the mid level PCs initially. Then you add in all the other benefits of PC gaming, steam sales, bundles, the fact you can type fan-boi comments in disqus on a keyboard, and it really amazes me that people are still bothering with the consoles. I mean there hasn’t even been a killer app on the Xbox and PS4 yet. And it would take a lot of those to make the R6000 + R800 per game you’re going to spend viable.