Steam controls up to 70% of the PC download market and is "tremendously profitable"

Valve CEO Gabe Newell has been speaking out about Steam's success, saying that, per employee, Valve is more profitable than Google and Apple. Estimates say that Steam controls between 50% and 70% of the PC download market and is "tremendously profitable."

Forbes attributes Steam's success to the way it simplifies the process of installing and patching games, while at the same time offering a good deal to publishers, who earn "a gross margin of around 70% on Steam, compared with 30% via retail stores." Gabe Newell also mentions that Steam could easily be used to sell films and music, but that Valve are concentrated on giving customers more ways to interact with the games they buy, and on trying to make Steam a "better piece of content" for PC gamers.

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Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.