10 Amazing Stats & Facts You Probably Don't Know About Steam
To a lot of people, Valve's Steam is the best place to get games (especially when they’re discounted).
Steam caters to all tastes, offering everything from action-packed shooters to mellow turn-based strategy games, from gory zombie survival games to cutesy games that feature puppies, from popular triple A games to indie titles hardly anyone has heard about.
That being said, let’s get down to the real reason why you clicked on this article. Here are 10 stats and facts that you probably don’t know about Steam.
1. Steam is older than you think
Remember 2002? It’s when the Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, Utah. It's also when Steam was introduced to the world.
Steam arose from the need to easily update online games and implement anti-cheat and anti-piracy measures. Valve approached several companies, including Microsoft, proposing they build a client that could deliver patches and game content to players via the internet. But they were turned away.
So Valve’s developers started working on Steam on their own. In March 2002, they unveiled Steam to the public at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). In January 2003, the first Beta version was released to the public.
2. Steam is available everywhere in the world
According to Valve, Steam is available in 237 countries around the world and in 21 different languages.
The weird part is that if you Google 'number of countries in the world', it says that there are 195 countries, not counting Taiwan which is not considered an official country by many.
3. Steam is home to thousands of games
Windows, Mac, and Linux users from around the world can use Steam to access an extensive library of games. What does extensive mean? It means that Steam is home to more than 3,500 games.
4. Steam and Japan have about the same population
According to the latest statistics, more than 125 million people around the world have a Steam account. Just to put things in perspective, that’s more than Mexico’s population and close to all the people in Japan.
And the highest number of concurrent Steam users was, drum rolls please, 10 million.
Check out the Steam stats page to see how many users are online right now.
5. The first game to have 1 million concurrent players was…
Dota 2 was the first to reach 1 million concurrent players. That means one million people were all playing it at the same time.
6. The top 10 games with the highest player count are
7. The most popular OS among Steam users is...
Love it or hate it, the simple truth of the matter is that Windows 10 is already used on more than 350 million devices. And it’s also used by the majority of Steam users. Some 43% of all Steam users are currently running Windows 10 on their PCs.
The second most popular operating system among Steam users is Windows 7. And the third is Windows 8.1.
8. The most popular Linux distro among Steam users is...
Unsurprisingly, it’s Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is most popular Linux distribution among Steam users. Coming in second on the list is Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS. And coming in third is Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa.
9. Steam had record sales last year
2015 was a record year for Steam. According to Steam Spy, people bought more than 350 million games from Steam. Furthermore, the paid Steam games market was worth over $3.5 billion. Yes, with a B!
This means that in 2015, via Steam, Valve controlled about 15% of the global PC games market (which is estimated to be around $27 billion).
10. Gabe Newell worked for Microsoft
Gabe Newell, the co-founder and managing director of Valve, spent a lot of time working for Microsoft. After dropping out of Harvard University, Nevell spent 13 years working for Microsoft, where he helped develop Windows 1.01, Windows 1.02 and Windows 1.03.
The good thing is that Newell became a “Microsoft millionaire." In 1996, he left Microsoft and founded Valve with another Microsoft employee, Mike Harrington.
Steam caters to all tastes, offering everything from action-packed shooters to mellow turn-based strategy games, from gory zombie survival games to cutesy games that feature puppies, from popular triple A games to indie titles hardly anyone has heard about.
That being said, let’s get down to the real reason why you clicked on this article. Here are 10 stats and facts that you probably don’t know about Steam.
1. Steam is older than you think
Remember 2002? It’s when the Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, Utah. It's also when Steam was introduced to the world.
Steam arose from the need to easily update online games and implement anti-cheat and anti-piracy measures. Valve approached several companies, including Microsoft, proposing they build a client that could deliver patches and game content to players via the internet. But they were turned away.
So Valve’s developers started working on Steam on their own. In March 2002, they unveiled Steam to the public at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). In January 2003, the first Beta version was released to the public.
2. Steam is available everywhere in the world
According to Valve, Steam is available in 237 countries around the world and in 21 different languages.
The weird part is that if you Google 'number of countries in the world', it says that there are 195 countries, not counting Taiwan which is not considered an official country by many.
3. Steam is home to thousands of games
Windows, Mac, and Linux users from around the world can use Steam to access an extensive library of games. What does extensive mean? It means that Steam is home to more than 3,500 games.
4. Steam and Japan have about the same population
According to the latest statistics, more than 125 million people around the world have a Steam account. Just to put things in perspective, that’s more than Mexico’s population and close to all the people in Japan.
And the highest number of concurrent Steam users was, drum rolls please, 10 million.
Check out the Steam stats page to see how many users are online right now.
5. The first game to have 1 million concurrent players was…
Dota 2 was the first to reach 1 million concurrent players. That means one million people were all playing it at the same time.
6. The top 10 games with the highest player count are
- Dota 2 – free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena video game.
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – multiplayer first-person shooter video game.
- Team Fortress 2 – team-based first-person shooter multiplayer video game.
- Grand Theft Auto V – open world action-adventure video game.
- Football Manager 2016 – football management simulation video game.
- Unturned – free-to-play, zombie-themed survival game.
- Garry's Mod – sandbox physics game.
- Sid Meier's Civilization V – turn-based strategy, 4X video game.
- ARK: Survival Evolved – action-adventure survival video game.
- Rust – multiplayer-only survival video game.
7. The most popular OS among Steam users is...
Love it or hate it, the simple truth of the matter is that Windows 10 is already used on more than 350 million devices. And it’s also used by the majority of Steam users. Some 43% of all Steam users are currently running Windows 10 on their PCs.
The second most popular operating system among Steam users is Windows 7. And the third is Windows 8.1.
8. The most popular Linux distro among Steam users is...
Unsurprisingly, it’s Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is most popular Linux distribution among Steam users. Coming in second on the list is Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS. And coming in third is Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa.
9. Steam had record sales last year
2015 was a record year for Steam. According to Steam Spy, people bought more than 350 million games from Steam. Furthermore, the paid Steam games market was worth over $3.5 billion. Yes, with a B!
This means that in 2015, via Steam, Valve controlled about 15% of the global PC games market (which is estimated to be around $27 billion).
10. Gabe Newell worked for Microsoft
Gabe Newell, the co-founder and managing director of Valve, spent a lot of time working for Microsoft. After dropping out of Harvard University, Nevell spent 13 years working for Microsoft, where he helped develop Windows 1.01, Windows 1.02 and Windows 1.03.
The good thing is that Newell became a “Microsoft millionaire." In 1996, he left Microsoft and founded Valve with another Microsoft employee, Mike Harrington.
