14 DAY TRIAL // Steam, the video game digital distribution service from Valve, has reported that it has managed to increase its year over year unit sales during 2011 by more than 100 percent, the seventh year that it has managed this impressive feat.
The company also says that overall sales value has increased during the same period, although not by the same percentage, making it the eight consecutive year that Steam has grown.
There are more than 40 million registered user accounts with Steam and over 1,800 PC video game titles are offered to them, with a new record of 5 million players logging in at the same time during the recent holiday sales period, which was coupled with a sort of reward driven meta-game.
Valve also says that 2011 has seen an increase of 67 percent when it comes to the number of video games that use the Steamworks API, with games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Total War: Shogun 2 getting more than 14 million copies enabled on Steam.
The good performance for Steam has been registered just as a number of rival services were launched, the most important of them being the Origin digital distribution concept from big publisher Electronic Arts.
Despite the big buzz around its launch, Origin has so far been notable for getting the EA back catalogue and a number of titles from third parties but has failed to attract a huge number of user accounts.
The rivals will continue to expand during 2012, with GameFly recently announcing that it plans to launch a push into the digital distribution area that is similar to that of Netflix when it comes to the movie and television series business.
Steam does not officially disclose sales numbers for titles that are offered through it and rarely offers official statistics for game popularity.