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What do you think of the Steam mobile app?

Just last night, a friend of mine was regaling me with tales of his latest exploits in Skyrim on Steam. Suddenly, the clock struck 9 and I was forced to cut short our conversation because Masterchef was on. That meant a trip to the front room, a BARREN WASTELAND devoid of web connectivity.

Then I remembered. The Steam app! I whipped out my phone and unlocked it with a quick thumb-flick. “Hey!” I said to my friend “STEAM APP! You can finish your story!” I waited a moment, and the reply came. “And then I threw the bear off the cliff!” he said. “lol” I said. We haven’t spoken since.

Still, the main thing is that the app worked beautifully. It’s free now on the App Store and the Android Marketplace. I haven’t bought any games on it mind, and I’m sure it could benefit from a few extra features, but what do you think? Have you been using it? What would you like to see Valve add in the future?

Origin is doing quite well: 9.3 million registered users, $100 million revenue since launch

Yesterday’s EA financial report turned up plenty of big numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Some of that success seems to have rubbed off on their new digital download service, Origin, which now has more than 9.3 million registered users. That’s about a quarter of the number of users as Steam. Not bad for a service that’s only seven months old.

EA’s Financial Results report also mentions that Origin has generated “more than $100 million in non-GAAP revenue since launch.” Origin-only pre-order deals and Origin digital exclusives like Star Wars: The Old Republic and the Battlefield 3 beta will have helped the service enormously in its early months. Its future prospects are none too shabby, either.

Steam mobile app now free to all

Last week Valve released the Steam app beta into the wild. Within hours hundreds of Steam users were receiving messages through Steam chat on their PCs saying things like “OMG I’m sending this from my mobile can u tell?” except with more spelling mistakes, because their fingers were shaking with raw, on-the-go excitement.

It’s now freely available to everyone with an iPhone or Android device on the App Store and Android Market respectively. It’ll let you access Steam chat and buy games through Steam on the fly. A vital tool for Steam sales to come.

Steam app coming to iOS and Android

Valve have just announced that a Steam app is incoming for iOS and Android. It’ll support chat, groups and screenshots. You’ll even be able to purchase games when on the move.

Lord of Valve, Gabe Newell seems keen: “Seeing which of your friends are online and playing a game, sending quick messages, looking at screenshots for an upcoming game, or catching a sale – these are all features customers have requested. Mobile is changing way people interact, play games and consume media, and the Steam app is part of our commitment to meet customer demands and expand the service functionality of Steam to make it richer and more accessible for everyone.”

Steam is doing quite well: 100% sales increase, 40 million registered accounts

We know that Steam’s on the grow, the five million concurrent users earlier this week indicated as much. Valve have released some more info to prove that their digital distribution service is still expanding at an impressive clip.

Sales have grown by 100% for the seventh year in a row in 2011. There are now 1800 games on Steam. 40 million people have registered for accounts (though not all will be active), and 780 Petabytes of data has been distributed to customers over the course of the year. 19 million items have also been traded. Valve don’t mention how many of those were hats.

X-COM Complete Pack super cheap on Steam and Gamersgate

XCOM: Enemy Unknown was revealed yesterday, a modern remake from Civilization developers, Firaxis. Tremendously exciting news for fans of the classic original, but what if you never played it? Steam and Gamersgate have you covered. You can get the XCOM Complete Pack today for a fraction of its original price. That means you can grab X-COm: UFO Defense, X-COM: Terror From the Deep, X-COM: Interceptor, X-COM: Enforcer and X-COM: Apocalypse for just £2.49 on GG, and £3.05 / $5.09 on Steam. Blimey. There’s just six hours left on the Steam deal. Go go go!

Steam hits five million concurrent players

Happy new year! We’re back of from two weeks of balancing dutiful shifts of family time with prolonged periods of PC gaming. From the look of Steam’s player stats page, we’re not alone. Steam has just broken the five million concurrent users barrier.

Alan Wake devs talk self-publishing and dodgy console ports

2012 looks like it’s going to be the year of the bigger studios self-publishing games on the PC. Rebellion Studios have already told us their plans to omit a publisher for the PC edition of Sniper Elite V2. Now Alan Wake developers Remedy have discussed the intricacies of their self-publishing arrangement for the PC version of the much-vaunted episodic Xbox 360 thriller.

Alan Wake was published on the Xbox 360 by Microsoft, so it seems a little odd that Remedy are publishing it themselves on the PC. We assumed that Microsoft’s vested interest in PC gaming (after all, they make that Windows thing) would put them at the forefront of publishing it, just as they have with Fable 3.

Gigantic Steam holiday sale stuffs stockings with games, coal

Hey, wait, didn’t we just get done shaking off the cruel shackles of poverty after the last one of these things? Oh well, unnecessary luxuries like roofs, walls, and food are largely inconsequential in the face of really great videogame deals. And man, if day one’s deals are any indication, this will be quite the hall-decking holiday haul. I mean, using my patented Raving Lunatic advocate scale, Portal 2 at $7.49 is a “BUY IT,” Just Cause 2 at $4.99 is a “Buyitbuyitbuyit,” and Orcs Must Die at $3.74 is a “[Violently collapses and begins foaming at the mouth]“.

The holiday sale’s also hosting a meta game that involves collecting coal. Basically, if you complete daily objectives, you’ll walk away with free games. But if you commit the naughtiest act of all – failure – you’ll receive a lump of coal. That coal, however, can be used to enter the Epic Holiday Giveaway. And if you win? Well, you’ll find every game on Steam waiting under your virtual tree. So then, make with the indiscriminate purchasing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to fish my beggar’s clothes out of the dumpster. And probably some days-old pizza. May as well get a head start.

APB Reloaded scores 3 million players in one week

The dust has finally settled on APB’s Reloaded reboot-up-the-arse, and it’s racked up a none-too-shabby 3 million registered players in the eight days after its release on Steam, according to Gamespot. The original, ridiculously troubled release apparently notched up a mere 130,000 players, but we heard rumours that this number was actually far lower.

It’s also currently sitting at number 15 in the Steam charts, making it the second most popular free-to-play game after the evergreen Team Fortress 2. 3 million isn’t such a bad number, too – it’s obviously dwarfed by the likes of Skyrim, but it’s almost up there with Battlefield 3′s 5 million copies. It’s also just over a quarter of the uber-popular League of Legends’ player base, too.

Skyrim officially becomes “fastest selling title in Steam’s history”

Ever since launch, Skyrim’s pretty much monopolized Steam’s most-played list (and, regrettably, the Internet’s entire supply of memes), so positively massive numbers were pretty much a foregone conclusion. That said, damn. First up, there’s this rather extraordinary bit:

“Skyrim is the fastest selling title in Steam’s history” said Jason Holtman, Valve’s director of business development (via IndustryGamers). “Bethesda’s commitment to and understanding of the PC as a gaming platform shows in the great review scores, spectacular launch, and continued high player numbers that Skyrim has received.”

Impressive? Certainly. But, uh, Holtman and I apparently didn’t fumble through the same wonky PC UI, whose convoluted layers made about as much sense as purchasing a plane ticket to visit your next door neighbors. Still though, a grand total of 10 million units shipped (not sold) and $650 million at retail on all platforms only serve to hammer home an obvious point: Skyrim’s kind of a big deal. Something tells me Tiny Tim the crippled Mudcrab is gonna have a magical Christmas after all. Well, until someone shouts him off a cliff, anyway.

Steam gets coupon support

According to a new FAQ, Steam now supports coupons. These tickets will sit in your inventory, and can be traded. Each coupon can be used on one game, but it doesn’t look as though they’ll operate as general Steam gift vouchers. The FAQ mentions that each one can be tailored to offer discounts on a certain selection of games. When you buy a game with a relevant coupon in your inventory, Steam will automatically apply the coupon discount. From there, you can choose to remove the coupon and save it for later.

Terraria takes on Modern Warfare 3 on Steam

The picture above is an image from Steamgraph showing the player stats for Modern Warfare 3 and Terraria. Terraria is shown in yellow, Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer is in blue and Modern Warfare 3 singleplayer is in red. As you can see, it’s been neck and neck since December 1. That’s when the huge Terraria 1.1 update landed, adding new items, monsters, bosses and biomes.