If you ask a non-gamer about steam, they’ll describe boiling water or the stuff that comes out of an iron. If you ask a gamer about Steam, there’s only one thing that comes to mind – cheap and accessible enjoyment. With over 40 million steam accounts, there were more people signed in to Steam during last year’s holiday sales than there were people watching the streamed royal wedding. It is a huge success for valve and a resource universally used by gamers worldwide. How did they get here and where are they going? That’s the question answered in the infographic below. Distribution models come and go,…

For some time now, serious digital gaming on the PC has been dominated by one brand alone: Steam. And so it should be. No-one else has offered a more straightforward, integrated, transparent approach to gaming. Steam has made PC gaming infinitely better, and it’s conceivable that without Valve’s efforts, gaming with a keyboard and mouse would be in far worse shape today. But Microsoft, never content to back down from a challenge, are fighting back with their new iteration of Games for Windows Live. Games for Windows Live – or GWFL as it’s known – was always an attempt to mimic the kind of success of…

Remember growing up when people used to want to be astronauts? Well tomorrow’s people walk this planet today, and while space exploration budgets are cut and we still don’t have jet packs, today’s the day the NASA-developed ‘Moonbase Alpha’ game hits the Valve Steam servers for some PC gaming goodness. Announcing the title last year, the space scientists spoke about the power of games as educational tools, saying their game functions as a persistent environment, calling it “a massive visualization tools and collaborative workspace while simultaneously drawing users into a challenging,…

Valve is bringing its popular Steam platform to the Mac. If you’re not familiar with Steam, it’s the super popular digital store front for Valve and its big hits like the Half Life franchise and Portal (the game where we all learned a very valuable lesson about cake.) This in itself is very cool if you’re a Mac owner. It’s even cooler if you’re a “switcher” who has missed playing games on the PC for years and even though it’s awesome and everything, that Xbox 360 sitting next to your TV just isn’t the same. I mean, the Mac hasn’t really ever had a universe of gaming options to choose from… I mean, there’s…