Steam Sales Double [Again] in 2011

Steam sales in 2011 more than doubled the mark set in 2010, making it the seventh straight year of 100 percent growth.

Is the ironic “PC gaming is dying” thing still cool? I don’t want to appear unhip, so maybe I’ll just get right to the point: based on the 2011 “growth data” recently released by Valve, the Steam juggernaut is bigger and badder than ever.

Year-over-year unit sales for 2011 grew by more than 100 percent, the seventh consecutive year of double – not double-digit, but straight-up double – sales growth. Stop and think about that for a moment: exponential sales growth for seven uninterrupted years. That’s a hell of an accomplishment.

It’s also 780 Petabytes of data delivered to over 40 million accounts from across the globe, five million of whom were logged on simultaneously at one point during the 2011 Holiday Sale. More than 14.5 million copies of Steamworks games, including Skyrim, Modern Warfare 3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, were registered in 2011 alone, a 67 percent jump over the previous year, while in-game item trading broke the 19 million mark. Steam now has over 1800 games on offer, including 18 free-to-play releases.

2011 also saw a dramatic upgrade to Steam’s service capacity as well as the deployment of a new content delivery system to improve download efficiency. For 2012, Valve head honcho Gabe Newell said users can look forward to the launch of the “Big Picture UI mode, which will allow gamers to experience Steam on large display and in more rooms of the house.”