Steam powers to 13 million accounts

Valve's digital distribution platform takes off

Written by Ian Williams

Valve, makers of the popular Half-life and Counter-Strike games, has announced that its Steam PC platform for digital content has surpassed 13 million active accounts. 

Steam now offers over 150 games in a broad selection of genres as well as dozens of other PC applications, movies and demos. The platform averages over seven billion player minutes per month. 

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Valve claims that Steam has served over 2,500 updates since its first release through its automatic update system for PC games and applications.

"In the past year, we have added over 100 new titles from third parties, grown to over 13 million active accounts, and introduced new features such as 'guest passes' and 'free weekends'," said, Valve president and co-founder Gabe Newell.

"This growth has taught us a lot and inspired many additional features and services that we'll be releasing later this year."

More publishers will be joining the Steam platform over the course of the year, according to the company, using it for electronic distribution and including it in their retail product releases in order to take advantage of features such as anti-piracy, server browsing and marketing promotions.

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