Steam hits new heights: over 15 million registered accounts for 2008

As the world draws closer to affordable broadband service and does away with easily scratched optical media, online distribution services, such as Valve Software’s Steam, continue to reach a wider audience. Valve was able to look back to 2007 and discovered that their user base has just topped off to over 15 million registered accounts. And what’s more, their sales growth peaked to approximately 160% year-on-year over the holidays.

Steam‘s registered user base is well over 15 million in total from around the world, though that wasn’t the only reason for Valve Software’s exhilaration over press wire. The company also made known the fact that they’ve observed a year-on-year growth of 158% in overall sales during the holidays, supported by the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, BioShock, and The Orange Box in 2007.

2007 also marked the year the Community features of Steam were launched, and while it is in continued testing and development, Valve won’t just be stopping there. They’ve also released a few teaser games for free as a collaboration with NVIDIA and have launched SteamWorks to grant developers free access to copy protection and auto-updating tools. Gabe Newell, Valve’s top dog, said:

PC gaming is thriving, and has evolved into an era of constant connectivity. That connectivity gives us the ability to have a much better relationship with customers, not just for delivering our games, but across all aspects of our business – including the design, development, and support of our games.

Valve has also announced that they’ll be present at 2008’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, so all those who’ve got access passes can visit them at Expo Suite 362. But first, let’s hope they can add a few more servers to reduce the frequent busy servers, eh?