Steam user base grows 25% in 2009

The number of active Steam accounts has now surpassed 25 million, according to the latest figures from Valve, following a 25 per cent year-on-year growth for the platform in 2009.

Of those accounts, over 10 million have profiles in the Steam community, said Valve, and the service's average monthly player minutes have hit 13 billion.

And peak numbers of concurrent users hit a new high in December of last year, eclipsing the 2.5 million mark.

There are over 1000 games now on offer through Steam's store, from over 100 developers and publishers. Unit sales in 2009 increased by more than 205 per cent, marking the fifth consecutive year the platform has achieved over 100 per cent year-on-year growth in unit sales.

"Steam turned five years old in March 2009," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "With the introduction of each new platform feature released over the years - such as the Steam Community, Steam Cloud, and Steamworks - we've seen corresponding growth in account numbers, concurrent player numbers and developer support for the platform.

"As such, we plan to continue to expand and grow the platform to better serve the developers supporting the open platform and millions of gamers logging in each day."

2009 saw an increase of titles supported by Steamworks, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Dawn of War II and Empire: Total War.