STEAM REACHES 15 MILLION ACCOUNTS

Leading Platform for PC Games Building Phenomenal Annual Growth

February 7, 2008 - Valve® today announced that Steam®, a leading platform for
PC games and digital entertainment, has surpassed 15 million accounts and
realized year-over-year sales growth of 158% through the holiday season.
The year also marked the debut of the Steam Community and launch of several
best-selling and critically-acclaimed titles such as Call of Duty 4, Bioshock,
and The Orange Box.
Throughout 2008 more Community features will be introduced to
support existing games as well as new titles such as Valve's Left 4 Dead.
Also new for Steam in 2008 is Steamworks, giving game developers access to game
features and services available on Steam ranging from product key
authentication and copy protection to auto-updating, social networking and
matchmaking. Most importantly, the game features and services available in
Steamworks are free of charge and can be used for both electronic and tangible
versions of games.
"PC gaming is thriving, and has evolved into an era of constant
connectivity," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "That connectivity gives
us the ability to have a much better relationship with customers, not just for
delivering our games, but across all aspects of our business - including the
design, development, and support of our games. Features like Guest Passes, Free
Weekends, Gifting, and the Steam Community have been very well received both by
customers and the developers who are using Steam. We are accelerating our
release of new functionality in the next year as well as finding new ways to
work with our partners such as the release of Steamworks, which allows them to
bring the many benefits of Steam to their packaged products."
Visit Valve during GDC at Expo Suite 362. For more information, please visit
www.steamgames.com

About Valve
Valve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996 and
based in Bellevue, Washington with offices in Irvine, CA. The company's
portfolio of entertainment properties includes Half-Life®, Counter-Strike®,
Day of Defeat®, Team Fortress®, PortalTM and Left 4 DeadTM. Valve's catalog
of products accounts for over 20 million retail units sold worldwide, and over
80% of PC online action gameplay. In addition, Valve is a developer of
leading-edge technologies, such as the Source game engine and Steam, a
broadband platform for the delivery and management of digital content. For more
information, please visit www.valvesoftware.com.

well thats alot i might get an account for myself

I have one and I've spent £0.00

My son has spent £200+

I don't like the games being almost the same price and sometimes more expensive than the retail box, so I encourage my son to buy the retail box game and register it on steam.

^but doesnt steam usually offer better deals

valve will be happy, good for steam

I think part of the reason for similar prices on steam is because of the retail stores getting pissed off (or at least that's what I've heard). Perhaps the price can drop and you can also get some better deals faster through Steam. Who can deny a free weekend of a game? Now, the issue of digital distribution comes up because I would rather have a disk of my game for backup, but I like Steam for what it's doing by putting gaming interests together and without charging you.

Despite that, I'm liking how Steam is getting all of these things yet it doesn't cost anything to use.

Valve also announced new features for developers for Steam as well. I think that could help smaller developers deliver games over Steam.