Steam membership jumps 25% in 09

Valve’s popular digital distribution network Steam now has over 25m members, the Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead developer and thriving distribution platform owner has revealed.

Member numbers surged 25 per cent in 2009. Of the registered members, 10m are described as having profiles in the Steam Community.

The peak number of concurrent users hit 2.5m during December, taking Steam’s average monthly player minutes to over 13bn in the process.

Over 1,000 titles are now offered on the network. Unit sales jumped by over 205 per cent in the last 12 months – it’s the fifth year in a row that downloads have increased by over 100 per cent year-on-year.

Steam turned five years old in March 2009,” Valve president Gabe Newell stated.

With the introduction of each new platform feature released over the years – such as the Steam Community, Steam Cloud, and Steamworks – we’ve seen corresponding growth in account numbers, concurrent player numbers and developer support for the platform.

As such, we plan to continue to expand and grow the platform to better serve the developers supporting the open platform and millions of gamers logging in each day.”