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[shink]

I wonder if I would be counted as active, as for the past couple of months I just logged in on mobile once and auto logged on my PC but did not actually play a game or do anything on Steam (just in background).

 

[epmode]

I feel like every single thread about Steam active accounts turns into the same discussion.

Yeah, I see the same silly downplaying of the numbers in every thread.

edit: Has anything changed regarding console numbers? I don't think any of those guys ever clarify what they mean about an Xbox or PSN account or whatever.

 

[jediyoshi]

Anyone who made an account that one time to grab a free game counts as active unless they go into their startup programs and remove steam. Most people have no idea how to do that. So basically, if you have turned on your computer and been online in the past 30 days you are active.

So the process of registering a steam account, redeeming a free game, downloading, installing and logging onto steam, and then changing the settings for it to start on boot is more feasible than believing that same person then not understanding uninstalling it?

 

[shark sandwich]

Great to see PC gaming thrive like this. I hope Steam's explosive growth continues.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Dat Dota 2

 

[Corpekata]

I can buy signage in stores to raise awarness and have sales me mention/incentivize my titles with pre order swag at retail... i can't do any of that on Steam

Err, this happens on Steam too. Just instead of a body pillow you get TF2 hats.

 

[Arulan]

Yeah, I see the same silly downplaying of the numbers in every thread.

It's almost as if there are a group of people who feel attacked by this news, I wonder who those people could be.

I'm really surprised at the growth. This is great for the platform, and more publishers (who aren't already) will likely take note.

 

[RK9039]

No one can stop this beast.

Maybe Uplay stands a chance.

 

[akira28]

explains why I can't get a legit 5+ posts in one Steam thread before they make a new one.

 

[ghst]

compare and contrast

 

[Lulubop]

I feel like every single thread about Steam active accounts turns into the same discussion.

Someone always has to be that guy and try and discredit it.

 

[Scum]

:O

 

[ArjanN]

That's a lot of titles publishers have to compete against.
That's a lot of cheap titles publishers can't afford to compete against.

Why compete against 1300 titles/indie publishers, when I can compete against 5 publishers and maybe 15 titles per month at retail?

Hence all the publishers rushing to release games on the Wii U.

Anyone who made an account that one time to grab a free game counts as active unless they go into their startup programs and remove steam. Most people have no idea how to do that. So basically, if you have turned on your computer and been online in the past 30 days you are active.

Does Steam even default to always starting on startup?

 

[SuperSonic1305]

compare and contrast

One thread is about console sales and one thread is about Steam accounts?

 

[crimsonheadGCN]

Anyone who made an account that one time to grab a free game counts as active unless they go into their startup programs and remove steam. Most people have no idea how to do that. So basically, if you have turned on your computer and been online in the past 30 days you are active.

Does Steam even default to always starting on startup?

I don't think that has been true since at least January when I had a post regarding the installation process:

Does anyone know when Valve updated the Steam installer and started disabling auto-start with Windows after first install? I have installed Steam and Windows like 2-3 times this last two months and each time, I have to enable it to start when the PC is turned on

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=95867536&postcount=2294

 

[Nzyme32]

This this why Sony and MS don't reveal gold/ps+ numbers anymore?

Made a post about this back in June:

So summary:

Google Play Games: 100 million - in 6 months (June 2014)
Steam: 75 million - 30 day active users (Jan 2014) / 186 million total (Arstechnica Crawler estimate April 2014) [65 million 30 day active Oct 2013]
PSN: 110 million accounts (undefined - July 2013)
Xbox Live: 48 million accounts (undefined - may 2013)

Edit - key point is that these can't be compared well since they all use different standards now. However up to 2010, Microsoft and Sony used the same 30 day active accounts metric

 

[Freeman]

PC is huge and this growth won't lose steam any time soon.

Made a post about this back in June:

So summary:

Google Play Games: 100 million - in 6 months (June 2014)
Steam: 75 million - 30 day active users (Jan 2014) / 186 million total (Arstechnica Crawler estimate April 2014) [65 million 30 day active Oct 2013]
PSN: 110 million accounts (undefined - July 2013)
Xbox Live: 48 million accounts (undefined - may 2013)

Why does PSN has so many more accounts than Live? Was most of that just because multiplayer was free on PS3?

 

[Nzyme32]

Why does PSN has so many more accounts than Live? Was most of that just because multiplayer was free on PS3?

I'd imagine so, but they didn't define what the number actual meant. I'd assume this would be total accounts, not active. As you can see with Steam and ars Technica's crawler data, active accounts are far lower than total, which is likely a big issue for free services. Google play though is far and away ahead with 100 million new accounts in 6 months. That should probably be expected though

 

[sixteen-bit]

wow, quite the milestone

 

[Usobuko]

Made a post about this back in June:

So summary:

Google Play Games: 100 million - in 6 months (June 2014)
Steam: 75 million - 30 day active users (Jan 2014) / 186 million total (Arstechnica Crawler estimate April 2014) [65 million 30 day active Oct 2013]
PSN: 110 million accounts (undefined - July 2013)
Xbox Live: 48 million accounts (undefined - may 2013)

Doubt Sony or Microsoft would beat Valve.

Not when the console market's appeal is limited to such a few regions and steam has one worldwide popular game that is free to play. If you take away dota 2, then maybe they have a chance. Maybe.

Why does PSN has so many more accounts than Live? Was most of that just because multiplayer was free on PS3?

I think it's also because people made accounts for different regions to take advantage of sales, demos and whatsnot.

 

[Grief.exe]

Why does PSN has so many more accounts than Live? Was most of that just because multiplayer was free on PS3?

Xbox Live is probably Gold accounts while PSN includes free accounts on PS3 would be my guess.

Point being you can't really compare these numbers one to one.

 

[Eteric Rice]

With Final Fantasy, DBZ, Dynasty Warriors, and Naruto starting to show up, all we really need is Kingdom Hearts and the Tales of games and PC will be set.

 

[dracula_x]

Made a post about this back in June:

So summary:

Google Play Games: 100 million - in 6 months (June 2014)
Steam: 75 million - 30 day active users (Jan 2014) / 186 million total (Arstechnica Crawler estimate April 2014) [65 million 30 day active Oct 2013]
PSN: 110 million accounts (undefined - July 2013)
Xbox Live: 48 million accounts (undefined - may 2013)

Also, 885 million iTunes accounts. But that's including music, video, apps.

 

[nkarafo]

All Valve needs to do now is release the big hit exclusive that's probably the king of all exclusives. The one that even puts console exclusives to shame. Make it happen pls.

 

[Portugeezer]

I feel like every single thread about Steam active accounts turns into the same discussion.

Last I remember active users are users who bought something in the last month. I can't imagine where these new 25 million "active" users came from, surely not for the decade old throwaway shovelware Steam has thrown on the front page for the past few months.

Meanwhile the highest concurrent users didn't get such a drastic increase.

 

[Bluth54]

All Valve needs to do now is release the big hit exclusive that's probably the king of all exclusives. The one that even puts console exclusives to shame. Make it happen pls.

Dota 2 is their one big hit exclusive that's king of all exclusives.
Even the number 2 and 3 games on Steam, CS:GO and TF2, while technically available on consoles, are more or less exclusives since they have a bunch of extra free content not available on console versions.

 

[Grief.exe]

Meanwhile the highest concurrent users didn't get such a drastic increase.

Concurrent users is total users per second, while active is total unique users per month.

It would make sense how the former metric would increase at a slower pace.

Dota 2 is their one big hit exclusive that's king of all exclusives.
Even the number 2 and 3 games on Steam, CS:GO and TF2, while technically available on consoles, are more or less exclusives since they have a bunch of extra free content not available on console versions.

My guess is he was making a reference to HL3.

 

[Omega]

I feel like every single thread about Steam active accounts turns into the same discussion.

what else could it be?

PC gaming is dead. it's been dead since 1985

 

[Portugeezer]

Concurrent users is total users per second, while active is total unique users per month.

It would make sense how the former metric would increase at a slower pace.

And it does. But with a 33% increase you'd expect concurrent users to at least reflect that.

 

[BennyBlanco]

Nothing stopping the Steam train. It's such a great service. I probably wouldn't have bothered to get into PC gaming without it. Zero paywalls, great social features, unparalleled sales, etc. I would really like them to ban stuff like rockstar social club, GFWL, and UPlay from their service because it's only gonna lead to shitstorms in the future. Who knows what will happen to those GFWL games who never had it patched out when GFWL shuts down? Other than that my only complaints with it are so trivial I won't even bother to bring them up.

 

[Grief.exe]

And it does. But with a 33% increase you'd expect concurrent users to at least reflect that.

My point was the total active users would not be a linear growth from the concurrent users.

Concurrent records show 7.6 million in December to 8 million now. 400,000 more users per second may seem like a smaller change on paper, but it should equate to a much larger change on the back end.

 

[MUnited83]

That's a lot of titles publishers have to compete against.
That's a lot of cheap titles publishers can't afford to compete against.

Why compete against 1300 titles/indie publishers, when I can compete against 5 publishers and maybe 15 titles per month at retail?

I can buy signage in stores to raise awarness and have sales me mention/incentivize my titles with pre order swag at retail... i can't do any of that on Steam

Erm, I don't know what kind of weird world you live in, but you can do that on Steam.

 

[Buggy Loop]

That's a lot of titles publishers have to compete against.
That's a lot of cheap titles publishers can't afford to compete against.

Why compete against 1300 titles/indie publishers, when I can compete against 5 publishers and maybe 15 titles per month at retail?

I can buy signage in stores to raise awarness and have sales me mention/incentivize my titles with pre order swag at retail... i can't do any of that on Steam

Wasnt there a dev a few weeks ago that mentioned, by rounding the percentage of peoples who play his games on steam, basically 0% plays the game, yet he's making a living out of it. say its 0.1%, its still 100k copies.

 

[Joseph Merrick]

now make all those accounts buy wasteland 2

 

[crimsonheadGCN]

Wasnt there a dev a few weeks ago that mentioned, by rounding the percentage of peoples who play his games on steam, basically 0% plays the game, yet he's making a living out of it. say its 0.1%, its still 100k copies.

Yes, the developer of Gunpoint and former writer from PC gamer (Tom Francis).

 

[Grief.exe]

Wasnt there a dev a few weeks ago that mentioned, by rounding the percentage of peoples who play his games on steam, basically 0% plays the game, yet he's making a living out of it. say its 0.1%, its still 100k copies.

100 million refers to unique active monthly users, while total Steam users is much higher than that.

 

[Schweinehund]

Now release 6.82.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Good for them.

 

[Buggy Loop]

100 million refers to unique active monthly users, while total Steam users is much higher than that.

Even better for devs then. Honestly, devs that ignore PC in this day of age when the console platforms are basically PCs, have no sympathy from me when they post shit business results. Im aiming mostly japanese devs

 

[jholmes]

That's a lot of titles publishers have to compete against.
That's a lot of cheap titles publishers can't afford to compete against.

Why compete against 1300 titles/indie publishers, when I can compete against 5 publishers and maybe 15 titles per month at retail?

I can buy signage in stores to raise awarness and have sales me mention/incentivize my titles with pre order swag at retail... i can't do any of that on Steam

Steam might not have the curation of a console, and in fact I don't think it ever will get close, but it's miles away from the mess that is the App Store, or whatever Google's Android store is called, so it's hard to take this too seriously.

 

[algert]

Nope.

This is ACTIVE accounts, which Steam considers anyone who has purchased games and were active online within the past 30 days.

The INSTALL base is MUCH larger, and that's more representative of the hardware numbers. Same goes for sales, as the ARS article on Steam sales strongly suggested.

It used to be about 140 million accounts, it's probaly up to 180-200 million by now.

That's right, there are about 190 million total Steam accounts now, which can be confirmed by the 32bit SteamID format. However, the install base for unique devices (not including mobile) is likely around just 90 million unique computers. This assumes the average number of Steam accounts created per user is 2.1 (190x10^6/2.1). I suspect the minimal average is 1.7, likely 2.0 +/- .1, and possibly even as high as 2.3.

As far as this "active" statistic goes, I don't think it's accurate as a comparative metric when analyzed alongside competing gaming platforms such as Microsoft's XBL or Sony's PSN. Such a comparison of "active accounts" is of more relevance when comparing Steam to the likes of similarly free social applications such as MSN or Facebook. I'd like to know how many unique Steam users there were in August (determined by unique IP address and/or email address) that played greater than five hours from the first to the last day of the month (five hours a month equates to about 10 minutes per day, a relatively low threshold). I would extrapolate from my 90 million unique device estimate that there are approximately 45 million maximum(+/- 10%) Steam users who play games for longer than five hours per month. I suspect half of all Steam users signed in at any given time don't spend a significant (>5hrs/month) amount of time playing games, rather they just sign-in to chat or, perhaps, have Steam set to automatically run and sign in on boot up.

PC only has so many users, and among that audience there are certainly some that exclusively play MMOs, League of Legends, or use Blizzard's Battle.net. There's probably a small but significant share of the market that uses Origin exclusively, too. I believe at this point Valve won't be able to significantly grow Steam in terms of gaining new customers unless PC gaming itself becomes more popular. Valve has already carved out their slice of the "pie" that is the PC gaming market, now the pie itself needs to grow in order for Steam to grow.

 

[epmode]

As far as this "active" statistic goes, I don't think it's accurate as a comparative metric when analyzed alongside competing gaming platforms such as Microsoft's XBL or Sony's PSN.

Fair enough. But just for comparison's sake, please clarify exactly what Microsoft or Sony mean when they say they have X million accounts. I know what Valve means but I'm having trouble getting the details for other services.

That's right, there are about 190 million total Steam accounts now, which can be confirmed by the 32bit SteamID format. However, the install base for unique devices (not including mobile) is likely around just 90 million unique computers. This assumes the average number of Steam accounts created per user is 2.1 (190x10^6/2.1). I suspect the minimal average is 1.7, likely 2.0 +/- .1, and possibly even as high as 2.3

Where are you finding that 90 million number? All of this math is very intimidating but I'd still like to follow along!

 

[Felix Lighter]

That's right, there are about 190 million total Steam accounts now, which can be confirmed by the 32bit SteamID format. However, the install base for unique devices (not including mobile) is likely around just 90 million unique computers. This assumes the average number of Steam accounts created per user is 2.1 (190x10^6/2.1). I suspect the minimal average is 1.7, likely 2.0 +/- .1, and possibly even as high as 2.3.

As far as this "active" statistic goes, I don't think it's accurate as a comparative metric when analyzed alongside competing gaming platforms such as Microsoft's XBL or Sony's PSN. Such a comparison of "active accounts" is of more relevance when comparing Steam to the likes of similarly free social applications such as MSN or Facebook. I'd like to know how many unique Steam users there were in August (determined by unique IP address and/or email address) that played greater than five hours from the first to the last day of the month (five hours a month equates to about 10 minutes per day, a relatively low threshold). I would extrapolate from my 90 million unique device estimate that there are approximately 45 million maximum(+/- 10%) Steam users who play games for longer than five hours per month. I suspect half of all Steam users signed in at any given time don't spend a significant (>5hrs/month) amount of time playing games, rather they just sign-in to chat or, perhaps, have Steam set to automatically run and sign in on boot up.

PC only has so many users, and among that audience there are certainly some that exclusively play MMOs, League of Legends, or use Blizzard's Battle.net. There's probably a small but significant share of the market that uses Origin exclusively, too. I believe at this point Valve won't be able to significantly grow Steam in terms of gaining new customers unless PC gaming itself becomes more popular. Valve has already carved out their slice of the "pie" that is the PC gaming market, now the pie itself needs to grow in order for Steam to grow.

I understand where you're coming up with the total accounts but where are you getting number of unique PCs and the rest of the numbers you're stating here? Even if you want to discount the active account number, we can see just based on concurrent players of the games in the actual games list that the numbers are growing.

 

[HariKari]

PC only has so many users

As compared to what? consoles? Are we taking bets on which has more users?

 

[John Harker]

Steam might not have the curation of a console, and in fact I don't think it ever will get close, but it's miles away from the mess that is the App Store, or whatever Google's Android store is called, so it's hard to take this too seriously.

It's hard to take the fact seriously that as a publisher with costs that are massive higher than an indie pub who pays himself and a few friends, who has to keep his software value high, to put more resources against competing with 5 publishers at retail vs 1300 separate ones on digital?

And who was talking about the App Store at all? This thread is about Steam and the post I was replying to was for major publishers. The App Store Sells different content then Steam and has different models anyway.

That said... It's not like I'm speculating

 

[Jotamide]

You would think so. Arcsys pls ;_;

Everyone in Japan pls.

 

[Grief.exe]

I understand where you're coming up with the total accounts but where are you getting number of unique PCs and the rest of the numbers you're stating here? Even if you want to discount the active account number, we can see just based on concurrent players of the games in the actual games list that the numbers are growing.

That has to be a joke post.

 

[epmode]

That has to be a joke post.

It's hard to tell with junior accounts. Stupid mobile site makes it hard to check someone's post history.

 

[Felix Lighter]

It's hard to take the fact seriously that as a publisher with costs that are massive higher than an indie pub who pays himself and a few friends, who has to keep his software value high, to put more resources against competing with 5 publishers at retail vs 1300 separate ones on digital?

And who was talking about the App Store at all? This thread is about Steam and the post I was replying to was for major publishers. The App Store Sells different content then Steam and has different models anyway.

That said... It's not like I'm speculating

I'm not sure what your getting at with your original post. All major third party publishers are on Steam, except EA, who decided to invest in their own digital PC store front. Is your point just that major publishers don't prioritizing Steam/PC because they can more effectively market at retail? That may be the case but they definitely aren't ignoring or abandoning the platform.

 

[jholmes]

It's hard to take the fact seriously that as a publisher with costs that are massive higher than an indie pub who pays himself and a few friends, who has to keep his software value high, to put more resources against competing with 5 publishers at retail vs 1300 separate ones on digital?

And who was talking about the App Store at all? This thread is about Steam and the post I was replying to was for major publishers. The App Store Sells different content then Steam and has different models anyway.

That said... It's not like I'm speculating

I'm not clear on this. Are you complaining that game development is expensive? Because that's really not a Steam problem. Are you complaining that we consumers buy games on Steam instead of going to a store to buy them? Because the horse bolted that barn a good decade ago.