Steam Now Has 67 Million Monthly Users

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Red_Sun

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Apr 8, 2012
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PC gaming is dead they said. Only consoles have real communities they told me. What? This is not so? Huzzah!
 
Fun Fact: It's been over 4 years since Valve last released a game (Not counting their free VR tech demo), over 6 years since they released a non-esports title, and nearly 10 years since Half-Life 2: Episode Two. >_>
 
There are a lot of gamers out there who are both PC and console and switch between buying games for the PC or the console. I do exactly that depending on which games my non-PC gaming friends choose for the PS4. For shooters, since I can't use a controller worth a flip for that, I go PC. But for racing games, I go with the PS4 because I have a wheel that works with both PC and PS4.

Also, I have a GOG and Origin account for other games like the Battlefield series, Witcher 3, and Fallout 4. Steam has the best community features, but GOG has no DRM. Origin has terrible DRM but games can be found at a huge discount. I do however miss the good old days of PC gaming where you could walk into a store and buy a boxed retail copy of a PC game and not have to use any online gaming portal at all. Plus, I just like having physical media in my possession. I only buy my console games in physical form, not download.

And everyone can just forget about Half Life 2 Episode 3 and HL3. An insider leaker years ago said that Valve scrapped the idea. He basically said every time a team was formed for the next HL project, it fell apart and the project died and it got harder and harder to get another one started. The powers to be at Valve got tired of wasting money and threw up their hands. It's long past time we all just admit Valve died as an active game developer after Portal 2.
 

Agam3mn0n

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Feb 12, 2014
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Every time a new console generation comes along, it arrives with fanfare and a promise "to kill PC Gaming" for good. It happened with the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, The PlayStation 3 and some even lauded the PS4's unified memory architecture as the death knell for the PC Gaming rig.

Here we are, with the greatest Platform there is still going strong decades after the promised 'death' was supposed to occur. Why is PC gaming so popular? I'd say its simply this, the PC is not an off the shelf knock off built to lock you out, the PC is ownership. I own my Machine, hell almost everyone here visiting Toms has made their own. That degree of ownership doesn't exist for any other platform. Our PC's are what we designed them to be. And no one can take it away from you. Long after the PS4 is forgotten the PC will still be there as it always has been, with the greatest and most extensive library of games in existence spanning 4+ decades.
 

dstarr3

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It's especially absurd now that consoles have more and more in common with PCs with every generation.
 


Some if not a lot of that has to do with game developers working with console makers to standardize hardware and make it easier for said game developers to code games for all platforms at the same time instead of having to do special coding for PC, another for the Xbox, and another for the PS3.

Several AAA developers quietly complained about the PS3's Cell processor being frustrating to work with compared to the Xbox 360 and PC although even the XB360 required some changes over the PC (dig around and you'll find old articles and interviews dating back from 2007). And some AA developers gave up on the PS3 altogether. This was also the root cause of why the games were very light to select from in the first several months of the PS3's release.
 

Jester Maroc

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Agreed 100%! We own what we build and we use it for so much more than just gaming!

On the topic of steam...considering the fact that our games are digital products it makes sense for a platform like this to flourish.

This is especially beneficial for us in 3rd world countries where government regimes are very greedy with taxation, physical copies being sold in stores normally retail for 2-3x the price that they can be purchased in the USA or EU. Steam makes it possible to have a large library for the price of 2-3 local store bought games.
 

d_kuhn

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Mar 26, 2002
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No platform like Steam is ever perfect, but Valve has done a decent job with Steam. It's annoyances are few enough that I've never been tempted to uninstall it. I install origin to play a specific title then nuke it when I'm bored of that one game and UPlay is so bad that I have chosen NOT to buy some games just to avoid it.
 

HC1Gunner

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Aug 6, 2008
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Its too bad that EA Origin could not learn or mimic Steam. I have more problems with Origin crashing, failing to update. In the last month Origin has failed to update twice, it so messed up that it cause you to uninstall it. Even with Legacy Game installers set to save, I've had to download (2) of my favorite games twice wasting a ton of time and bandwidth, Xfinity (poorest cable co.) has a cap on my monthly bandwidth use, which they never used have. With Steam I can BU my game(s) and never have to worry about downloading them again.
Six years old, and Origin is still a piece-of-crap app! ! !
 
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