Ah right, I didn't think of that at all. That makes a lot more sense
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Steam hits 9 Million Concurrent Users on 13th March 2015
- Thread starter Nzyme32
- Start date
Ah right, I didn't think of that at all. That makes a lot more sense
Whipped Spartan
Member
Given that list in op are we left to assume most of the 9 million were not playing games?
Netherscourge
Banned
OverturePT
Member
Some on PC, some on consoles, some on mobile...
in-game numbers at the time was around 2.6 million. And there are thousands of other games on Steam with players in them than what's in the OP.
eot
Banned
CS matchmaking actually has slightly different rules, 45s bomb timer and 2m roundtime. It's dumb.
Highlander is closer to the pub game but yeah, 9 people is simply too much for an esport most likely. Lan logistics, it's messier from a spectator view etc
Neither form of competitive TF2 is perfect. There have been some experiments with a more unrestricted style of 6v6 but most people have been playing 6v6 for years with not much changing so it's hard for them to adapt. Only way to change it up would be Valve forcing it through matchmaking rules, if it ever comes.
I didnt know that, that's really suprising.
I'm not so sure if they continue to have the ridiculous server issues they are having. It's getting to where I can't even play it with a pretty sizable portion of my games being horribly broken due to lag and just straight up frozen servers. I thought Dota was bad but CS is so much worse.
codswallop
Member
Depending on whether you take all of those stats, or just stats from the start of the year, it looks like 10m concurrent users will be hit either August 2015, or February 2016. Unless there's an unexpected spike like at the end of 2013!
Using trend average since Jan 2012
Using trend average since Jan 2015
Using trend average since Jan 2012
Using trend average since Jan 2015
A difference between selling to 9m dedicated gamers vs 100m office workers on Windows XP.
Are you telling me that Windows isn't a storefront dedicated to just selling games?
It's like I've been living a lie my whole life.
Permanently A
Junior Member
afternoon delight
Member
Seeing Fallout New Vegas played consistently always warms my heart.
Steam sells applications now.
It's roughly the equivalent of telling people they need a client to play games like they need to visit keywords via their AOL client. It's sandboxing and lock in for the sake of it.
Hazelhurst
Member
CS GO is currently the main game I play. 40 hours in past two weeks.
Why? Steam has no exclusivity clauses and most people are perfectly capable and many are willing to dissever themselves from the Steam client to go on GOG or their own site or Origin if it's in their interest (which it isn't.) They just realize that Steam is a convenient choice where people want to buy their games.
Steam is the defacto choice because that's where people buy games. It keeps you up to date and makes setting up games easy. Going outside Steam is a sum benefit to zero of the people playing those games. It's only a valid choice if you have some weird hardon for their "restrictive DRM."
I haven't played it, but I wonder if Arena Respawn would work well for TF2 competitive matchmaking.
My 17 year old nephew just started gaming on my PC a few weeks ago, now he wants a gaming PC so bad! lol. I asked him what do you want (he's also my godson) a ps4 or a gaming PC. He said the gaming PC! lol, so me and my sister (his godmother) are going to go halfers on one for him, nothing to insane, but something he can start up with. He deserves it, he tore his knee last year in football just had surgery, so hopefully by the summer we will hook him up on!
Once people see how good pc gaming is, its an eye opener.
Once people see how good pc gaming is, its an eye opener.
they do and even if you don't sign one they de-facto cause it by trying to get games to deeply integrate themselves into the steam backend to make the game more 'valuable' to steam owners, leading to a self-fulfilling lock-in spiral.
Probably because Steam actively works to keep you locked into wanting any more games to contribute to locking you into Steam's skinner box set up. This is objectively the way Steam is designed. "At least these cuffs are comfortable" isn't really a valid defense for allowing anyone to becoming a slowly encroaching de-facto monopoly.
Why can't Steam just let me download games directly from their website without the client that don't use Steam DRM? Why can't I plug in external chat clients or connect Steam to external chat/IM protocols? They even avoided smart integration with my music library and insist on now having their own music player instead of hooking into the Windows api to let you control your music program of your choice.
Orthogonal
Member
CS GO still showing amazing growth. No sign of slowing down. It might even eclipse Dota 2 in the next year at this pace.
More_Badass
Member
A lot of great games not being on Steam could be another reason
What's the clause? Show me some developer saying that they were asked to sign an exclusivity clause to get their game on Steam.
And Steam keeps you locked in by making you want more games? No, they make it convenient to have a collection of games and then you choose to keep them there. Does my game shelf on GOG mean they are putting hand cuffs on me? They are integrated to the back end to make things easier for people. There is a business reason to do that but it doesn't preclude a developer from making a Steam-free version like the Shadowrun folks did.
I'm guessing because it makes things confusing for their customer when some games can be downloaded through the website but not others whereas going through the client a developer can choose to make a game DRM-free and then the file can be moved willy nilly and the process is seamless for the customer but you can get your DRM free copy.
Ok? That's true but that's not really beneficial to the consumer, it's actually taking away their chocie to get the game where they want it. The only benefit (which is fairly nebulous) is in keeping Steam honest through comeptition by forcing consumers to go elsewhere kicking and screaming. Some people like myself don't really care one way or the other but some people want one library.
SneakyStephan
Banned
What? So much wrong in this post
On pc the spread of users among games is much more even than on consoles or mobile.
There's many hundreds of games that sell good numbers and have consistent good userbases (and a few giants like dota , world of tanks, league of legends)
On console the AA game doesn't even exist... it's a few dozen successful AAA attempts (and ten failures for every success) and a few select indies and everything else doesn't sell.
On mobile it's a few dozen huge games like candy crush , some games that do ok and literally tens of thousands of failures for every one of those ( that sell double digit numbers, as in they sell 18 copies).
Mobile gaming is like the dot com bubble right now... those that got in early had a good chance to make it big and right now it's so overcrowded (with mostly garbage, too) that it's like playing the lottery wether anyone will even notice your game.
PC is the only platform where if you make a medium or smaller budget game and it's any good that you have a good shot at finding a sizeable audience for it.
@ "Are we the core PC gaming market? Us right here?
Are we enough?"
Typical core PC IPs like europa universalis, NS2, crusader kings and many other mid budget high quality titles that have a sizeable audience on PC aren't even popular (or known) enough on gaf to get anything more than a 3-4 page worth of posts OT thread about them, several of the games in the top steam list don't even have a thread on gaf.
Gaf is the AAA / pop culture equivalent gaming forum
So no, gaf is not the core pc gaming market.
NDAs
I have at least two games I worked on , on Steam. The one I can mention got Greenlit and is in beta testing for general release.
Similar deals have been signed to get games on Xbox Live and PSN as well in the past.
They do have convienence. And then they make you run the Steam client to even use stuff like the matchmaking / server list backends, and may other features. This stuff used to ship as neutral libraries with games that you could run under your client of choice. Now you have no choice.
This is a good point, but they could just make DRM-laden games trigger redirect you to a Steam client download. Allowing people to just download the games they bought also means if you're on Linux, you can just get the game without rolling the dice that Steam won't crash when it loads up.
See, this is where I as a developer disagree. "Where you want it", to me, is Windows. Having to make a different version for the same audience is just .. silly. A neutral Windows version works for everyone. A Steam version is work for a small subset of the overall Windows userbase that have downloaded the Steam application or just clicked through an install of a game they bought elsewhere.
Ideally, clients would just be library managers and not entire freakin' software stacks. If I wanted to use Steams stuff, neat, but I should be able to export the library metadata and use someone else's client if I want to. As an example. The steam libs shouldn't need a client I need to boot up. Even a bunch of games that used Gamespy didn't even require you to install and use the Gamespy metaclient.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
He didn't die, he multiplied.
Jaded Alyx
Member
Uh huh...and where are these figures from?
MrCunningham
Member
That Valve trifecta of DOTA2, CS:Go and TF2.
TekGryphon
Banned
That just blew my mind. Can I get some sauce?
There's no such thing as a "Steam exclusivity agreement" (see the Greenlight FAQ). What you're undoubtedly thinking of is that if you want your game distributed on Steam you're required to sell it on the Steam Store itself, however this doesn't mean you have to sell on Steam exclusively but rather in addition to elsewhere (i.e. you can't just upload your game and then sell keys and keys alone, thereby cutting Valve out of the loop). I mean, the following button on the Steam Partners site doesn't just link you to a blank page with the text "Haha, fuck you!"
If the above sounds familiar it's because it's exactly how Source 2 licensing will work -- the engine is free to use but you have to distribute your game via Steam.
TekGryphon
Banned
I hope FyreWulff wasn't banned for that last post. I didn't see anything else in his recent history that seemed offensive.
codswallop
Member
125 million active user accounts. Pretty sure they consider an active account that's logged in in the past month.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
This was my nightmare scenario 10 years ago.
Not anymore. If someone in your family bought something on Steam but tragically passed away five years ago, that account is now considered "active".
SodiumBenzoate
Member
You da real MVP
I've kept steam idling 24/7 more or less for the last 3 years, surprised it took this long to get to 9m. I guess I'm just an electricity wasting outlier.
I think you missed the 90 days part.
It's "or", not "and".
Oh yeah, look at that. I was curious so I looked up the source:
http://youtu.be/VcrmTXb92DE
Skip to 1:28.
So yeah, anyone that purchases anything from Steam is considered permanently active. Crazy. The term is pretty misleading now.
At least the concurrent user count is useful.
Now i have to teach him about all the settings and what part is which going to make him put it all together and i will help him, get him a steam account and some games, and bam, its gaming time for him!
I can understand Valve wanting to include users who play F2P games exclusively and forgo microtransactions, but it really should have axed purchases from the equation entirely and instead just upped the allowed time since last login.