Steam has attracted 27m new paying users in 18 months
Monthly active players now up to 67m, with daily average of 14m concurrent users
Valve has released updated figures for Steam's userbase, showing the leading games marketplace continues to entice new players.
During a presentation at Casual Connect USA this week, the company's business development and marketing exec Tom Giardino revealed that Steam has recorded 27m first-time purchasers since January 2016, GeekWire reports. That's an average of 1.5m new users every month.
Giardino defined a first-time purchase as someone who registered an account and bought a premium game, or downloaded a free title and invested in their first in-game purchase.
Overall, Steam's monthly active player count has risen to 67m - considerably ahead of the 53m Xbox Live users Microsoft recently reported, although only around half the 125m active users Valve has recorded over Steam's lifetime.
However, the number of users playing Steam games every day continues to grow. Valve reports 33m daily active players, with an average concurrent user count of 14m per day. Giardino says this is more than double the 8.4m reported in 2015.
The presentation also noted signifiant growth in Asia. The region currently represents 17% of Steam's global sales, thanks mostly to uses in Korea, China and Japan. A few years ago, this region's contribution to Valve's revenues was minimal.
Steam's presence in more restricted markets like China have enabled Western publishers to also introduce their brands to new audiences. Last week, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told GamesIndustry.biz that Assassin's Creed is increasingly popular in China thanks to Steam.