Steam raked in nearly one billion dollars in 2010

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CoD: Black Ops, Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 top service's bestseller list

Digital distribution may never win over the hardcore brick and mortar loyalists, but according to the videogame analyst firm Forecasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment, LLC (FADE), it's paying off huge for Valve's online PC gaming service, Steam, which ended its 2010 year with roughly $1 billion dollars in estimated revenues.

According to FADE's 2010 report, Steam took in an estimated $970 million USD in combined sales, $213 million USD of which was earned during the 2010 holiday season. We're not sure how Valve head Gabe Newell celebrated this news, but we'd like to think the party looked something like this:

The report also listed Steam's top 10 bestselling titles; seven of which were developed by Valve itself. Despite its strong showing, however, it was Activision that beneffited most from the digital distribution platform thanks to its Call of Duty titles and expansion packs which took in roughly $153 million USD in gross sales.

The full list is as follows:

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision) - $98.2 Million USD
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision) - $39.4 Million USD
3. Left 4 Dead 2 (Valve) - $36.0 Million USD
4. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Electronic Arts) - $25.4 Million USD
5. Sid Meier%26rsquo;s Civilization V (2K Games) - $21.9 Million USD
6. Portal (Valve) - $20.0 Million USD
7. Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda Softworks) - $17.0 Million USD
8. Metro 2033 (THQ) - $13.4 Million USD
9. Mafia II (2K Games) - $11.9 Million USD
10. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising (THQ) - $10.8 Million USD

Last October, Valve head Gabe Newell announced that Steam had accrued over 30 million active accounts, and that 2010 looked poised to go into Steam's history books. Yeah, looks like it did alright.

Feb 4, 2011

[Source: FADE]


That's 10% of the US population


...so they can hold on to the money that was in your wallet

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Matt Bradford

Matt Bradford wrote news and features here at GamesRadar+ until 2016. Since then he's gone on to work with the Guinness World Records, acting as writer and researcher for the annual Gamer's Edition series of books, and has worked as an editor, technical writer, and voice actor. Matt is now a freelance journalist and editor, generating copy across a multitude of industries.