Ah I remember the old days, when all you had was Counter-Strike 1.6 and the back catalog. Then came Condition Zero and the Counter-Strike: Source beta. Finally, Half-Life 2 comes out and it still takes FOREVER to get into the game despite all the pre-loads. I should have probably timed how long it took to load the game and for each in-level load because they were so long.

And here we are today, wow.

I remember how god awful Steam was at first too. I still have issues with it, but I can't call it anything but good in an overall sense.They seem to be the only company with big enough balls to push the cost savings a company gets with digital distribution while simultaneously promising that should they ever go down they will flag all games as playable sans internet. It is the only reason I trust buying from them at all to be honest.

I do like the fact that they can have so many sales for their games and can encourage so many sales for other games on Steam.

Picking up Left 4 Dead 2 the other week for $7 was awesome. Then there's the whole big winter holiday sale.

why do have 3 accounts anyway? I mean I can't think of any benefit to having more than one account, and I don't think it's hard to get the password reset, or change your display name...

For having one game, probably not.

I remember when I bought Half-Life 2, I bought the silver package which also included Valve's catalog of games. I should have made a new account to buy Half-Life 2 because then I would have had two accounts with older Valve games, especially multiplayer games like Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike.

Then again, I don't think that kind of thing would happen again since you can now gift extra copies of a game tied to your account to somebody else. Unless that only works not only Valve games, but newer Valve games?

I may not have logged on for the past thirty days, so I don't even count for this statistic even though I have bought quite a few games and played for many hours in Steam (mostly TF2).

I have 2 accounts (both are for me and my brother), and I only logged in one of them the last few months.

There could be a few millions of accounts that weren't added to those 30 millions.

but it's only the west that they have conquered..they havent conquered asia yet..I believe all three consoles with their online accounts still beat it am i right?

well considering this http://www.ps3blog.net/2010/04/13/ps3-has-biggest-percentage-of-internet-connected-consoles-in-the-us/ data which is heavily skewed towards being connected thanks to the fact that they polled broadband users in the USA, actual real world numbers would be far lower.

Estimated Internet users by console

Wii 40 million

360 31 million

PS3 30 million

like I said these numbers are probably greatly exaggerated because of the context of the study. Internet attach rates for consoles outside of the US is much lower, and even in the USA the actual numbers would be much lower due to the study polling "Broadband users" which would be more likely to hook their console up to the Internet than someone that doesn't have broadband...

It is only Facebook gaming can save it.