Valve’s Steam service has been faced with several competitors recently with other storefronts like the Epic Games Store popping up while other companies create their own game launchers. If it wasn’t evident that many people still prefer Steam despite these other options, the stats recently shared by Valve that recapped 2019 showed just how much time people invested in the platform. According to Valve, there were over 20 billion hours logged on different Steam games throughout last year.

This lofty figure and many more were touted in Steam’s 2019 Year in Review breakdown where we saw how the platform did last year. The post covered the numerous improvements Valve made to Steam including the big Library update, work on review bombs, and announcements like the reveal of Half-Life: Alyx. Amid these recollections was the tally of how many hours were put into Steam by players throughout the year.



“With all of the ways Steam enables players to enjoy your games on Steam, we're happy to report that we delivered over 20 billion hours of gameplay in 2019,” Valve’s post said.

We shipped a number of major updates and new features to @Steam in 2019. Today, we're sharing a recap of those improvements and a glimpse of what's to come in 2020.

Here's our 2019 Year in Review!https://t.co/JWrtGOREna

— Steamworks (@Steamworks) February 5, 2020

The exact number of hours logged in Steam was 20,789,726,718, according to the handy infographic which was included in the review of 2019.



Those different ways to play on Steam included Steam Play for Linux as well as Steam Remote Play, a feature that’s becoming more popular from different gaming companies since it allows people to play their favorite games in different ways. Another service that offered people opportunities to have a much different experience playing games is SteamVR, the platform’s virtual reality feature.

Many more hours will be put into Steam throughout 2020 with a higher portion of them likely being funneled into SteamVR thanks to Valve’s next game. Half-Life: Alyx is only playable with VR headsets, but you don’t have to have a Steam Index to play it. It’ll be supported by other VR headsets, and since it’s been so long since a Half-Life game released, you can bet that people will be picking up some VR setups and dumping some serious time into that.

Posted: Feb 08, 2020 11:43 am
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2020/02/06/steam-players-20-billion-hours-in-2019/