In context: Similar many other digital amusement services (such every bit Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+), Steam exploded in popularity throughout 2022. This was no bully surprise given the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders imposed on the public due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but regardless, information technology was an exciting yr for PC gamers.

With that said, even Valve itself likely couldn't have predicted just how explosive its growth would become toward the latter one-half of the twelvemonth. In 2022, the massively-pop gaming platform reached the 120 million monthly agile players milestone, which is a big step forward.

For reference, Steam's comparable 2022 figure sabbatum at 95 1000000 monthly active users, so 2022 brought an increment of at to the lowest degree 25 meg players. On an equally-impressive annotation, Steam too managed to pull in 24.8 million peak concurrent players.

Those players also bought more games than ever before -- a 21.4 percent increment over 2022 -- and they spent more fourth dimension in said games. To be more specific, Steam saw average playtimes increase by 50.seven percentage across the board compared to 2022.

Again, this isn't a shock due to the increased free fourth dimension many of us had in 2022 (voluntarily or otherwise), but that hasn't stopped Valve from bragging nearly information technology.

All of this information comes courtesy of Steam's latest "Year In Review" blog post. The post includes a few other juicy tidbits, as well -- for example, controller utilize skyrocketed in 2022, co-ordinate to Valve.

46.half dozen meg users decided to use a gamepad as their input method of pick during the entire year, versus 2022's 31.eight million. VR acquirement also saw a nice boost on Steam, increasing 71 per centum year-over-year.

One-half-Life: Alyx is responsible for the bulk of that increment (39 percent), but other VR game sales also saw great success, boosting revenue by the remaining 32 per centum.

With all of this in listen, at present comes the question: can Steam maintain all of this success in the long term? As PC enthusiasts, we hope and so, merely merely fourth dimension will tell.