Steam owns up to 70 per cent of the lucrative PC download market and is 'per employee' more profitable than tech giants Apple and Google.
A new report outlined in a recent Forbes profile notes that Steam controls between half and 70 per cent of the PC game download market, worth in the region of $4 billion per year.
Per-employee profits
Valve boss Gabe Newell revealed that Steam was incredibly profitable for the company and made the claim that profit-per-employee was higher at the games developer, which employs 250 full-time members of staff, than it was at Apple and Google.
Over 6 million users download games and access their saved games via Steam on a daily basis.
With over 1,200 games already available via Valve's service and over 30 million registered users, added to the fact that publishers make around a 70 per cent clear profit (compared with around 30 per cent via 'traditional' high street retail) it's not difficult to see how Steam has quickly grown into such a success for Valve.
Valve is valued at somewhere between $2 billion and $4 billion, according to the latest report in Forbes.
Via Eurogamer and Forbes.com