Leading Entertainment Platform Expands Reach and Services

October 30, 2013 – Valve today announced 30% growth in active accounts during the trailing 12 months on Steam, a leading platform for PC, Mac, and Linux software.

Now offering over 3,000 games and software titles to over 65 million accounts, 2013 also marked Steam’s 10 year anniversary of providing services to gamers. Expanding upon that history, Steam gamers saw the introduction of several new service features during the year, including Family Sharing, Steam Trading Cards, Early Access, and support for Linux titles.

Looking ahead to 2014, Valve looks to expand Steam’s services and offerings to gamers and developers by holding the Steam Developer Days in Seattle, WA this January and rolling out the recently announced Steam Machines with a variety of hardware partners later in the year.

“The main goal of Steam has always been to increase the quality of the user’s experience by reducing the distance between content creators and their audience,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “As the platform grows, our job is to adapt to the changing needs of both the development and user communities. In the coming year, we plan to make perhaps our most significant collaborations with both communities through the Steam Dev Days and the Steam Machines beta.”

For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com

Coming Soon: Players who share computers can also share their Steam games

September 11, 2013 – Steam Family Sharing, a new service feature that allows close friends and family members to share their libraries of Steam games, is coming to Steam, a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC, Mac, and Linux games and software. The feature will become available next week, in limited beta on Steam.

Steam Family Sharing is designed for close friends and family members to play one another's Steam games while each earning their own Steam achievements and storing their own saves and application data to the Steam cloud. It's all enabled by authorizing a shared computer.

“Our customers have expressed a desire to share their digital games among friends and family members, just as current retail games, books, DVDs, and other physical media can be shared,” explained Anna Sweet of Valve. “Family Sharing was created in direct response to these user requests.”

Once a device is authorized, the lender's library of Steam games becomes available for others on the machine to access, download, and play. Though simultaneous usage of an account’s library is not allowed, the lender may always access and play his games at any time. If he decides to start playing when a friend is borrowing one of his games, the friend will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing.

For more information about Steam Family Sharing and the beta program, please visit store.steampowered.com/sharing.

Platform Feature Helps Double Independent Titles On Steam During First Year

August 29, 2013 - Valve, creator of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the one-year anniversary of Steam Greenlight, the platform feature that enlists the community's help in selecting new titles to be released on Steam.

In addition to enlisting the community's help with the selection process, Greenlight represents an effort to help increase the volume of independent titles being published on Steam.

Since the feature launched on August 30 of last year, the number of independent titles available on Steam has doubled. Meanwhile the volume of new Greenlight submissions has shown no signs of slowing with new titles being submitted every day.

"Ultimately our goal is to have no bottlenecks at all between developers and consumers," said Gabe Newell of Valve. "As we move closer to that, launching Greenlight and evolving our backend toolset has helped us increase our publishing throughput, pushing the number of independent titles released in the last twelve months to equal the number of titles published from all other categories combined. We expect that number to grow dramatically as we continue to iterate upon our developer service features and seek more ways to improve Steam's value to the community."

Launched on August 30, 2012, Steam Greenlight is a feature of Steam, a leading platform for PC, Mac, and Linux games and software with over 50 million active accounts worldwide.

For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com

Leading Platform Offers Pre-Release Playability for Select Titles

March 20, 2013 -- Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the addition of an Early Access section to Steam's library of over 2,000 titles.

Steam Early Access titles allow the community to get involved early and play select titles during their development. The goal of Early Access is to provide gamers with the chance to "go behind the scenes" and experience the development cycle firsthand and, more importantly, have a chance to interact with the developers by providing them feedback while the title is still being created.

To support the interaction between Early Access players and developers, Steam offers easy and automatic updating of games, letting developers iterate quickly to respond directly to bug reports and feedback from customers. And, like all Steam games, Early Access players will be able to interact with other players, making it easy to create and share screenshots, tips, and in-depth guides.

"A lot of games are already operating as ongoing services that grow and evolve with the involvement of customers and the community," said Sean Pollman of Badland Studio. "Greenlight helped us raise awareness for Kinetic Void, and now Steam Early Access will let us continue the development of our game while gathering crucial feedback, input and support from the steam Community."

The first titles coming to Steam Early Access are:

• 1... 2... 3... KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby)
  
• Arma 3
  
• Drunken Robot Pornography
  
• Gear Up
  
• Gnomoria
  
• Kenshi
  
• Kerbal Space Program
  
• Kinetic Void
  
• Patterns
  
• Prison Architect
  
• StarForge
  
• Under the Ocean
  

For more information, and to see all Early Access titles, please visit www.steampowered.com/earlyaccess

February 26th, 2013 - Valve today revealed the fifth set of games and Software titles to advance through Steam Greenlight and be offered worldwide distribution via the popular platform for games and software.

Over 70 titles have advanced through Steam Greenlight and been offered Steam distribution agreements since Greenlight launched in August of last year.

The latest software titles:

• Black Ink
  
• Driver Fusion
  

The latest games:

• Anodyne
  
• Distance
  
• Evoland
  
• Huntsman:The Orphanage
  
• Kingdom Rush
  
• Legends of Dawn
  
• Organ Trail: Director's Cut
  
• Receiver
  
• Surgeon Simulator 2013
  
• War Thunder
  

These titles will be released independently in the months ahead (as they are varying stages of completion).
Steam Greenlight is a new platform feature that enlists the community's help in selecting some of the next games to be released on Steam. Launched on August 30, 2012, Greenlight allows developers and publishers to post information and media about their game in an effort to convince Community members that their game should be released on Steam.

For more information, please visit http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight

January 17, 2013 -- Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the launch of Steam Guides, a new capability of the platform that allows players to create and/or find guides for their favorite games or Software titles on Steam.

Steam Guides lets players create and share guides, walkthroughs, and tips for their favorite games or software to help others who might be stuck or who simply want to learn more about the game. Players may easily create guides through Steam, where they may upload images, add screenshots, and embed YouTube videos. Guides are then quickly accessible through Steam, via the Steam Community and in-game via the Steam Overlay.

To learn more, please visit www.steamcommunity.com/guides

Service Expansion Allows Players to Buy and Sell In-Game Items Via Steam

December 12, 2012 -- Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today introduced the Steam Community Market, now in Beta with Team Fortress 2.

The Community Market is designed to expand the Steam Economy beyond trading. Players are now enabled to buy and sell in-game items with other players for Steam Wallet funds.
"With over a half million trades made every week, the trading system has been very successful," said Tony Paloma of Valve. "Extending game economies beyond trades and giving players a way to turn gameplay into funds for new items and games is a key component for moving that success forward."

The Steam Community Market, now in beta with Valve's Team Fortress 2, will be available to other titles on Steam in the New Year. Games that participate enable users to show off their items on the Steam Community and sell or trade their items to others.

Items purchased are subject to transaction fees, please see FAQ for more http://www.steamcommunity.com/market/faq

Week-long Steam Sale on Big Picture-Friendly Games

December 3rd, 2012 -- Valve today announced the public release of Big Picture, Steam's new mode that lets gamers access all of their favorite Steam games on a television from the comfort of their sofa. Big Picture has been designed to be used with a traditional gamepad, while also fully supporting keyboard and mouse input.

To celebrate the public launch of Big Picture, over thirty controller-friendly games will be on sale from now until December 10, with savings up to 75% off.

Access to the complete Steam store is included, as is the Steam Community. Big Picture is available worldwide in over twenty languages, including German, French, Russian, Korean, and Portuguese.

Gamers’ existing games are all available in Big Picture. In addition to having the complete library of Steam games, each user's cloud files, Steam Workshop content, account information and preferences will be accessible automatically in the new mode.

Steam gamers may easily experience Big Picture on their televisions by connecting their PC or Mac, typically with a single HDMI cable. Big Picture also includes a new web browser designed for televisions and game controllers. It is accessible from anywhere within the Big Picture UI, and even while playing Steam games on a TV. It supports Big Picture's new method of typing with a gamepad, which is useful for entering URLs, filling out forms, chatting, and other functions.

For more information, please visit http://www.steampowered.com/bigpicture.

50 Titles Receive Greenlight Since Launch

November 30, 2012 - Valve today revealed the third set of games and first set of Software titles to advance through Steam Greenlight and be offered worldwide distribution via the popular platform for games and software.

The latest collection of games and first set of Software titles to advance through Greenlight were selected for having either the highest number of positive votes or on an incredible upward trajectory since being added to Greenlight.

With these titles, 13 games and six Software titles (see full list below), a total of 50 titles have advanced through Steam Greenlight and been offered Steam distribution agreements since Greenlight launched in August.

"In just three months, the community has helped us identify 50 new titles for us to offer via Steam," said Alden Kroll of Valve. "With the help of Greenlight, the indie games market share of games sold on Steam has increased by 50 percent for a third consecutive year. That's a stat we are proud of, but one we also hope to increase as we learn more about Greenlight and continue to refine it in the new year."

Steam Greenlight is a new platform feature that enlists the community's help in selecting some of the next games to be released on Steam. Launched on August 30, Greenlight allows developers and publishers to post information and media about their game in an effort to convince Community members that their game should be released on Steam.

For more information on Steam Greenlight and to vote for new games, please visit www.steamcommunity.com/greenlight

New Steam Greenlight Games

• Blackspace
  
• Darkfall Unholy Wars
  
• Dawn of Fantasy
  
• Dragon's Lair
  
• Euro Truck Simulator 2
  
• Gear Up
  
• Kinetic Void - Space Adventure
  
• The Light
  
• No Time To Explain
  
• Primordia
  
• Sang-Froid : Tales of Werewolves
  
• StarForge
  
• Waking Mars
  

First Steam Greenlight Software Titles

• Action! Screen Recorder
  
• Bandicam: Game Recorder
  
• Construct 2
  
• Display Fusion
  
• HitFilm 2
  
• You Need A Budget 4
  

Nov 6, 2012--Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the launch of a limited access beta for its new Steam for Linux client.

The Steam for Linux Beta client supports the free-to-play game Team Fortress 2. Approximately two dozen additional Steam titles are now also available for play on Linux systems. Additionally, the Steam for Linux Beta client includes Big Picture, the mode of Steam designed for use with a TV and controller, also currently in beta.

“This is a huge milestone in the development of PC gaming,” according to Gabe Newell, Valve President and co-founder. “Steam users have been asking us to support gaming on Linux. We’re happy to bring rich forms of entertainment and our community of users to this open, customer-friendly platform.”

The Steam for Linux Beta client is currently available for installation on Ubuntu 12.04. “An overwhelming majority of beta applicants have reported they’re running the Ubuntu distro of Linux,” according to Frank Crockett, a member of the Steam for Linux team, “We intend to support additional popular distros in the future; we’ll prioritize development for these based on user feedback.”

Within its first week, Valve received over 60,000 responses to its request for participants in the Steam for Linux Beta. The first round of beta participants has been selected from this group of respondents.

The Steam for Linux Beta client will become available to a widening group of users over the course of the beta. Subsequent participants will be chosen among survey respondents, and once the team has seen a solid level of stability and performance across a variety of systems, the Steam for Linux client will become available to all users of Steam.

Steam is a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC and Mac games with over 50 million accounts around the world and over 2,000 titles offered.

More details regarding Steam for Linux, including community discussion, beta participants’ feedback, official announcements and syndicated news can all be tracked on the new Steam for Linux Community Hub at http://steamcommunity.com/linux.