Steam Now Has One Billion Accounts (And 90 Million Active Users)

By Liz Lanier

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Valve’s digital PC games storefront Steam got its billionth registered user on Sunday, but the actual userbase of the store is more indicated by its monthly active users statistic, as pointed out by PCGamesN .

User number one billion is ‘amusedsilentdragonfly,’ according to ID Finder .

With the world population at more than 7 billion, it seems an impressive feat— but, keeping in mind that plenty of those billion accounts are spambots or alt accounts, the monthly active users is more indicative of how many PC gamers use Steam. Back in October , revealed that its Steam Store has more than 90 million monthly active users, which was up 23 million from the year prior.

A good portion of that userbase growth is from the increasing popularity of Steam in China , where more than 30 million of the store’s monthly active userbase originates from, according to past figures.

Steam is still the dominating PC games platform, despite fierce competition from relative newcomer Epic Games Store. The Epic Games Store has been snapping up exclusive rights to digital PC sales of select games, including ” Metro Exodus” and “Borderlands 3.”

Though the Epic Games Store has various issues raised by consumers, many developers are supporting the platform because Epic Games takes a 12% cut of revenue compared to Valve’s 30% cut.

Gearbox CEO and founder Randy Pitchford commented on the decision to release “Borderlands 3” on the Epic Games Store earlier this month, explaining that the move toward Epic Games is one step closer to a more diverse and competitive PC games economy, challenging Valve’s relative monopoly in that space.

“From a track record point of view, my expectation is that Epic’s investment in technology will outpace Valve’s substantially,” Pitchford said. “When we look back at Steam in five or ten years, it may look like a dying store and other, competitive stores, will be the place to be.”

” … at the end of the day,” he continued, “When we look back at this moment we’ll realize that this was the moment where the digital stores on PC became unmonopolized.”

In line with this belief, Tim Sweeney, CEO and founder of Epic Games, said last week that Epic Games would cease pursuing exclusives if Valve could commit, without strings, to giving an 88% share of revenue to developers.