Steam Hits 15 Million Accounts

Service celebrates massive growth and speeds up development of Steamworks.

Steam, the game delivery service from Valve, announced that it has surpassed 15 million accounts. The company says that its year-over-year sales increased 158 percent, helped in large part by the digital releases of hit games, The Orange Box, BioShock and Call of Duty 4.

Valve's future outlook shows promise with Left 4 Dead and the introduction of Steamworks, which gives developers options to add auto-updates, social networking, product key authentication, matchmaking and copy protection for free.

"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." via GameDaily