13 Million People are Steam-ing

The digital distribution of games continues its march as Steam announces it now has 13 million subscribers.

If you want proof that the digital distribution of games has become big business, here it is: Steam, one of the leading game distribution platforms, has announced that it’s signed up a staggering 13 million users.

Owned by the game developer Valve, Steam was originally intendedas a method for updating Valve’s multiplayer games. But it’s taken on a life of its own, and these days Steam not only carries over 150 PC games, including Half Life 2, it also has updates to some 2,500 more.

According to Valve co-founder, Gabe Newell, all this is a sign of how important digital distribution of games has become.

“In Steam’s case, we havemillions of customers who are gamers and dozens of customers who are developers and publishers.”

Of course, they’re not the only players. Microsoft lets XBox Live subscribers buy and download games, including the beta for Halo 3 – the first time they’d made a trial version of a game available tousers. With their PSN and Virtual Console services, Sony and Nintendo also allow users to download classic titles.

So is this the way we’ll all be buying our games? It’s possible, but there are still many hurdles to go. At the moment, relatively slow broadband speeds and the massivefile sizes of game titles means download game dominance is still a long way off.