Valve Releases Ten Years Of Amazing Sales Figures
Half-Life, the first-person shooter that put Valve on the map, has sold, on average, almost a million copies each year since its release in 1998. It’s still the company’s best seller—and that’s just at retail.
But the figures for Valve’s other games — which similarly don’t include games sold via Steam — Counter-Strike, The Orange Box, Half-Life 2 and more, are just as impressive. According to a report from Gamasutra, the original Half-Life has amassed 9.3 million sales over the past decade. The sequel, released just four years ago alongside its digital distribution platform, added another 6.5 million to Valve’s retail sales.
The impressive sales for the original Half-Life are at least due in some part to the enduring popularity of free mod Counter-Strike. Even with that option, however, over 4 million gamers snapped up copies of the standalone, less expensive Counter-Strike package.
Valve didn’t disclose its Steam numbers, probably saving those for PowerPoint presentations for publishers interested in signing on to its digital download service. But if the drop between Half-Life and Half-Life 2 sales is an indication of the number of folks who went for the Steam version, we’d say the business is probably a success.
Last year’s collection The Orange Box topped 3 million, with Gamasutra estimating that the recently released Left 4 Dead will beat that by a good 600,000. Impressive.
For more number fun, hit up the original report.
Analysis: Valve’s Lifetime Retail Sales For Half-Life, Counter-Strike Franchises [Gamasutra]
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Oh Gordon, a man of few words.
excel_excel
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Half-Life brought me TFC and TF2, the very least I could do was buy it 3 times.
Pezdispenser
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Hey Valve can we see some Steam numbers please? No? Thought so...
Garo
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I only see steady decline in sales of own projects, and rapid growth in digital distribution of third-party games.
somarix
@Tampeh: What I meant is that high quality is not correlated to high sales, nor the other way. Great games sell badly and awful games sell in spades all the time. The fact that Half-Life is good and sold well means nothing, because The Last Express or Outcast are master pieces and sold really bad, and Kingdom Hearts are not exactly quality products and sell much more than HL. You may not agree with my judgements, but I am pretty sure you can find you own examples.
EloraHRanma
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