Steam hits 15 million users

Online game community and delivery platform, Steam, has surpassed the 15 million user mark, its operator Valve announced today.

The holiday season alone saw 158 per cent growth year-on-year, helped by the success of key titles available through Steam, including Call of Duty 4, Bioshock and The Orange Box.

The company also announced plans to extend the community features for various titles, as well as the introduction of Steamworks, a selection of tools for developers dealing with aspects such as product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, social networking and matchmaking.

Valve president Gabe Newell commented: "PC gaming is thriving, and has evolved into an era of constant connectivity. 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."