Service Feature Adds Powerful Way To Shop For Games And Software

February 12, 2014 - Valve, creators 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 launched user-defined "Tagging" of products on Steam, a leading platform for games and software with over 75 million accounts worldwide.

Now available in beta, Tagging gives Steam customers the ability to "Tag" any title with genres, themes, attributes, or any other term or phrase. The most popular tags on any given product will be surfaced on said product's Steam page and allow users to easily find other products associated with that same tag.

As with the "Recently Updated" section launched last week, Tagging is designed to provide more ways to discover interesting content on Steam.

Additionally, a related product section was launched today, making it easy to browse by any of the frequently used tags assigned by the community.

"As the catalog of products available on Steam continues to grow, we want to ensure that it is easy for customers to find the particular types of games or software they are looking for," says Al Farnsworth of Valve. "With this new feature, we are providing another powerful tool to help organize and browse products on Steam."

User-defined Tagging is available in beta form immediately and is accessible to all Steam users.

For more information, please visit http://store.steampowered.com/tag

Leading Entertainment Platform Continues Rapid Growth

January 15, 2014 – Valve kicked off its first-ever Steam Dev Days Conference by announcing the continued growth of Steam, a leading platform for PC, Mac, and Linux software. In addition, Valve geographically detailed Steam’s 2013 performance to the more than 1,200 Dev Days attendees.

In the trailing three months the number of active Steam accounts jumped 15%, to 75 million from 65 million (announced October 2013). The growth was realized during a busy holiday release season and Steam’s Pre-Holiday and Holiday Sales.

In addition, members of the Steam publishing team gave attendees a breakdown of 2013’s geographic platform usage. While the figures show a virtual tie between North America (41%) and Europe (40%) for the lion’s share of Steam’s global activity, Russia and Brazil realized the largest year over year growth (2013 vs. 2012) of any individual country, respectively increasing 132% and 75%.

Steam Dev Days is a two-day conference for all developers and publishers working with Steam and/or the upcoming Steam Machines. Steam Dev Days is being be held in Seattle, WA. For more information, please visit http://www.steamdevdays.com/

VALVE REVEALS FIRST GEN STEAM MACHINES

Over One Dozen Designs Announced

January 6, 2014 – Valve, creators 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 over one dozen Steam Machine designs now in production from leading manufacturers and targeted for release in 2014.

The lineup of Steam Machines announced today offers a wide variety of price and performance options made possible by the Steam Machine’s open design, with systems starting as low as $499 and top end systems rivaling today’s bleeding edge gaming PCs.

Every Steam Machine includes an innovative Steam Controller designed for use with a wide variety of game genres, and is powered by the SteamOS, a custom OS built atop Linux.

"The first generation Steam Machines offers something for every gamer, which is a critical part of extending Steam into the living room," said Gabe Newell of Valve. "With over 3,000 games and more than 65 million gamers on Steam, it’s important to offer gamers a variety of Steam Machines that allow them to select what makes the most sense for them."

Announced earlier this year, Steam Machines are new entertainment systems targeted for use in the living room and leveraging Steam, the popular online platform for gaming and software with over 65 million accounts worldwide.

The makers of first generation Steam Machines are:

• Alienware
  
• Alternate
  
• CyberPowerPC
  
• Digital Storm
  
• Falcon NW
  
• GigaByte
  
• iBuyPower
  
• Maingear
  
• Materiel.net
  
• Next Spa
  
• Origin PC
  
• Scan
  
• Webhallen
  
• Zotac

For more information, please visit our CES Press sheet and www.steampowered.com.

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