Quietly and unobtrusively, the billionth account was registered in the Steam community. Steam ID Finder , which was created on April 28, receiving a Steam ID filled with zeros but without any fanfare or fireworks. Valve has not responded to this event, possibly because this number holds less significance for the company compared to the number of daily or monthly active users. On the other hand, players are already the owner of the 'jubilee' profile and asking to add him as a friend.
The problem with using the number of accounts as a measure of a gaming platform's success is that many of these accounts are blocked, others are second or even third accounts for the owner, and some are just bots. Therefore, the most accurate assessment would be to look at the current online metrics.
Last year, the number of simultaneous active users on Steam exceeded 18 million, partly due to the huge success of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and this figure has remained around 15 million since then. In 2018, the total number of players on Steam averaged 47 million per day and 90 million per month, which is 23 million more than the previous year.
Perhaps the biggest factor contributing to the audience growth was the rising popularity of PCs and Steam in Asia, especially in China. While in 2012, Western Europe and North America dominated Steam sales, and no other region was even close, six years later, even though many games do not support the Chinese language, the Asian market in sales turned out to be nearly as large as North America.
Steam remains the largest platform for selling PC games, although it now has competition, particularly due to exclusives from the Epic Games Store, and this must be taken into account. This will not change the number of registered users, and Steam still has hundreds of thousands of games, but as more publishers prefer the alternative platform, the number of concurrent active players may significantly drop in the future if this trend continues. We will have to monitor the official statistics and any potential steps Valve may take to maintain its market position.
Source: 3dnews.ru
