PC gaming is dead... Not.

Yesterday, Valve gave a very interesting press release I'd like to share. I'm definitely saving this article as an argument to use against console fanboys who claim PC gaming dying. =)

Leading Platform for PC & Mac Games Continues Massive Growth

October 18, 2010 - Valve® today announced the latest growth data for Steam, a leading platform for PC & Mac games and digital entertainment, revealing new account growth of 178%, sales growth of over 200%, over 200 Steamworks games shipped to date, and more.

During the past 12 months the platform had year-over-year new user growth of 178%, pushing the total number of active accounts to over 30 million, with over 1,200 games now offered. Peak simultaneous player numbers were also up to over three million, with over six million unique gamers accessing Steam each day.

In addition to new user growth, Steam sales during the trailing 12 months increased by more than 200%, putting it on track for a sixth straight year of realizing over 100% year-over-year growth in unit sales. To meet this demand, the Steam infrastructure has been increased and now has ability to run at 400Gps, enough bandwidth to ship a digitized version of the Oxford English Dictionary 92.6 times per second.

The period also realized continued adoption of the Steamworks suite of publishing services in tangible and electronic versions of today's popular games. Included in many of the year's biggest releases -- such as Sid Meier's Civilization V, Just Cause 2, and R.U.S.E., with more to come during the holiday season -- Steamworks has now shipped in over 200 since the suite of services was released two years ago. In addition, the Steam Cloud (introduced in Spring 2008) has surpassed the 100 million files saved milestone.

"Steam is on track to record the biggest year in its six year history," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "The year has marked major development advances to the platform with the introduction of support for Mac titles, the Steam Wallet and in-game item buying support, and more. We believe the growth in accounts, sales, and player numbers is completely tied to this work and we plan to continue to develop the platform to offer more marketing, sales, and design tools for developers and publishers of games and digital entertainment"

For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com

About Valve
Valve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996 and based in Bellevue, Washington. The company's portfolio of entertainment properties includes Half-Life®, Counter-Strike®, Day of Defeat®, Team Fortress®, PortalTM and Left 4 DeadTM. Valve's catalog of products accounts for over 35 million retail units sold worldwide, and over 80% of PC online action gameplay. In addition, Valve is a developer of leading-edge technologies, such as the Source game engine and Steam, a broadband platform for the delivery and management of digital content. For more information, please visit www.valvesoftware.com.

What do you think about Valve/Steam? What happens if by some random chance Steam dies/goes bankrupt/gets nuked? Will you lose all your games? I'm sure some people have thousands of dollars worth of games on Steam.

Personally, I love Steam, and I wish more game developers would release their games there. If a game isn't on Steam, I don't buy it - I love to keep all my games organized in one spot, and Steam does that for me. Besides, I don't have to worry about scratched disks or misplaced CD-Keys.

What about you? Do you love or hate Steam? Post your thoughts below!

Steam ftw!