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More than 40% Valve's Steam user base are also avid users of BitTorrent
These delicious statistics have emerged thanks to Steam's hardware and software survey which now includes a breakdown of installed applications on each user's computer. With up to 25 million users being polled in the survey, the accuracy is really second to none -- at least when it comes to gamer-specific trends! It's worth noting that the survey is completely automated too -- Steam scans your hard disk and hardware configuration to produce these figures.
In non-BitTorrent-related news, Firefox is by far the most popular browser amongst gamers with 63% of Steam users having it installed (Chrome is almost at the bottom with only 11.5%). Almost everyone has Adobe Flash, 73% have Acrobat Reader, and a rather large 57% have Microsoft Office installed. I wonder how many of those Office installations were downloaded via BitTorrent... Perhaps Steam gamers spend so much money on games that they don't have enough left to spend on Microsoft Office...?
Incidentally, these figures are only for Windows installations. Here's something for the Mac crusaders, though: iTunes is actually installed on more computers than uTorrent (but only just), and QuickTime is installed on 44% of computers!
(Note: the above image is snipped, or I would never have fit it all in!)
Comments
13
Subscribe to commentszerovoxAug 24th 2010 10:39AM
Just because the total percentage of torrent applications is above 40% does not mean that over 40% are users, people may have multiple clients installed, as I do. The only conclusion that can be reasonably drawn is that from the sample, at least 29.41% have torrent applications installed.
Sebastian AnthonyAug 24th 2010 10:40AM
It comes to about 43-45% I think, and I really doubt many people have multiple BitTorrent clients installed :)
xabbottAug 25th 2010 9:05AM
I think it's very reasonable to assume multiple torrent clients. Just like many gamers have multiple browsers, media players, etc.
Wiizer [Now with 320 Gigs On My Launch PS3!]Aug 24th 2010 10:46AM
Most of those programs aren't much of a surprise.
I have QT Lite on mine, because you run into files every now and then. And I have uTorrent installed because I had to download Mechwarrior and initially, they were only hosting it via torrent.
I think if you have Steam, you're probably one of the last people pirating games as Steam always has a better deal!
LeonickAug 24th 2010 11:37AM
What do you mean by steam having a better deal? I can't see a pirating thinking "Hmm 49.99 €? What a great deal, much better than free over at isohunt." :P
Do note that I do in no way support piracy
frank.naessensAug 24th 2010 11:23AM
What Zerovox said!
RichardAug 24th 2010 11:36AM
I don't mind Valve collecting hardware information for their survey since it's pertinent to their business of creating and selling games - but I'm not sure I'm particularly happy that they are rummaging around my machine looking at what other (non-related) applications I have installed.
Unless of course this is opt-in functionality by default and presented very clearly to the user before it happens - although I've not seen anything like that when I've been using Steam.
Sebastian AnthonyAug 24th 2010 11:49AM
It's opt-in :) A box pops up, asking if you want to take part.
2late2dieAug 30th 2010 10:00AM
It is opt-in though I'm fairly sure they "bundle" it with the hardware survey, i.e. if you already approved that one, you want get a separate prompt for this one. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
8complexAug 24th 2010 1:41PM
I stopped using Steam as soon as it was required for the playing of my purchased PC games years ago. Immediately downloaded a cracked version of the game I had just bought because I didn't want it being such a parasite on my system.
Good to see that they haven't much changed it in the past 11-12 years. :rolleyes:
F-ZeroAug 24th 2010 2:57PM
wait. so what exactly is your complaint about steam? the fact that it takes up a few MB of RAM while you're playing, or is it maybe that you never realised there is an 'offline mode'...in any case, how does that result in the decision to pirate rather than purchase
2late2dieAug 30th 2010 10:05AM
I don't like the fact that some games require Steam (regular, 3rd party boxed ones, obviously for digital only or those from Valve it makes sense), and I really don't like how it installs everything in steam folder inside some weird, convoluted, folder structure. However, these gripes are far outweighed by all the advantages of using Steam, one of the main ones being the insane sales they sometimes have.
xabbottSep 2nd 2010 4:23PM
Putting everything in the Steam folder actually makes moving the collection trivial. You install Steam on a new system and dump "steamapps" folder into it.