Analytic Dreamz: Notorious Mass Effect - "STEAM MADE AN ESTIMATED $1.7 BILLION IN SEPTEMBER, AN ALL-TIME NEW RECORD"

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Linktree: ⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/Analytic⁠⁠Join The Normandy For Ad-Free NME, Additional Bonus Audio And Visual Content For All Things Nme+! Join Here:⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://ow.ly/msoH50WCu0K⁠⁠ In this segment of Notorious Mass Effect, Analytic Dreamz examines Steam’s new all-time record of 43.5 million concurrent users on October 11, 2026 including 14.46 million in-game, independent projections exceeding $20 billion in 2026 revenue fueled by new releases, free-to-play spending, and back catalog, Valve’s lean operations with around 350 employees, and Valve hardware challenges featuring an estimated 80% drop in Steam Deck sales after price increases plus Steam Machine estimates of 760,000 units yearly amid RAM shortages. Essential facts for understanding PC gaming platform growth.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/analytic-dreamz-notorious-mass-effect/exclusive-contentPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Shepard, promise me you'll tell them to subscribe for ad free content. Now, ladies and gentlemen, over here at notorious mass effect, of course, we began to the gaming and music IPs that notoriously affect the masses. So the thing I wanted to start off with is a specific human that was on this earth. You know what I'm saying? Shepherd, just look at the state of gaming. Like, what is going on? As far as what's going on in the gaming industry, Doug Lombardi said to him, said to him,

So, hmm, I wonder if we could ever get the cheaters off of Counter Strike. I'm just saying, this may seem like a random side tangent for the topic we're about to get into, but as far as a 2008 games industry interview, he basically started to name some people, you know, because he definitely had the proof of people turning him down and he ultimately went with the company who we're going to talk about today. But the companies he named that did not want to build an anti-cheap infrastructure for CounterStrike reportedly was Yahoo and Microsoft. It's safe to say even though Microsoft and Yahoo both rejected it, a certain company

that you may have heard of came and said to Doug LaBardi, they were. was like you know what we will make that anti cheat for you and guess what ladies and gentlemen the rest of history as that is one of the most minute instances where steam aka valve was on the rise as far as in the gaming industry as if you don't know it was just reported that steam has set in all-time concurrent user record of course the reason why that's so big we're gonna get to the number in the second but of course why that's so big is because steam began in 2003. Ladies and gentlemen, it is only 2026.

So when you look at their start compared to where they're at now, it just showcases that with the right plan, of course, the sky is the, well, sky is the limit? Is that how you say? I don't know. Basically, it's limitless what you can achieve with the amount of infrastructure that's been built over time that just started in 2003. So anyways, when it comes to Steam specifically, When you look at Valve's internal tool for automated patching, anti-chi, and anti-piracy,

of course, when it came to a counterstrike, that was the biggest, that was the biggest proof that it was successful and effective. And of course, when it came to future developments, you had Half Life 2 in November 2004, which required steam even for physical copies, rapidly growing the user base. And then in 2005, Steam opened the third, open to third party games, starting with titles like Rag, Dog, Kung Fu, then added features like sales, clouds, friends, workshop, achievements. And of course, the network, the effects compounded. Basically, more games came into the infrastructure, attracting more developers, even more developers. And when it came to Greenlit in 2012 and later, Steam direct, further fueled the indie,

boom as far as frequent sales and a lot of top-tier clients in the gaming industry. And of course, now, objectively speaking, Steam has roughly 70% of the revenue when it comes to PC games. Shepard, just look at the state of gaming. Like, what is going on? So whenever we're getting into the gaming and music IPs that notoriously affected Mass is safe to say this is a well-deserved deep dive into why Steam is such a big deal in the gaming ecosystem, but of course,

the updated record as far as 43.5 million concurrent users, which is an all-time peak for Steam, and that happened October 11, 2026, which also reinforces its position as the leading PC gaming distribution platform, because if you don't know,

other companies have tried. I would compare it to T.U. and movies and cable as far as how Netflix came along and then everybody else was just so behind Netflix's marketing strategy and how they ended up making everybody else try to copy their strategy because now when you look at Valve slash Steam you have a lot of developers trying to make their own system like Steam whether it's what's it called whether it's the Ubisoft Engine I forget what that's called, whether it's the EA engine. Basically, all these other engines make it to where it is more of a hassle than a benefit

for PC consumers. Steam have had so many pro-consumer tactics to the point where when they do pop out with anti-consumer practices, whether it's the steam machine, you know what I'm saying? Oh, my fault. We're giving praise the steam right now. Whether it's missteps and their marketing strategy. people are willing to overlook that because of the million times they've had pro consumer consumer strategies so anyways their strategy has definitely been leaps and bounds as far as the

pack when you look at the steam db peak is 43.5 million concurrent viewers uh users and it involves public statistics because of course you know all of these statistics that i get for these these deep dives that i give you uh one because i take my job serious but you know hence my name. Safe to say we can't do fake news over here when it comes to analytics. You know what I'm saying? Come on, Drusky. Come on, Drusky. Come on, Drewski. I'm trying to get into my topic, man. Anyways, you ain't got to do all that, but definitely make sure to rate this five stars. So anyways, getting back into why I'm even talking about Valve's public statistics is because we're diving deeper as we're using some of Alenia analytics, which is a Norway-based games market intelligence

firm founded in 2023 that sells PC. slash console sales. So the main thing is finding the info and they're selling it. And guess what? Your boy is copying. You know what I'm saying? So anyways.

So they basically came out with a lot of different analytics talking about Steam's revenue and things of that nature. And one of the things I realize, especially if you're a current employee for Valve, is that y'all are being treated phenomenal.

Now, of course we don't know the behind the scenes, but from a bird's eye view, looking at all these gaming developers and publishers laying off their employees left and right. You look at Valve and you come to realize, ladies and gentlemen, they have around 300 employees. And when you look at the revenue estimates, as far as the pool of money that they're pulling from, I mean, it's just egregious. To the point where the lower end of revenue for employees at Steam is around 150 to 350 to 350. $250,000. What in the actual?

You guys. And then the actual medium, as far as in the middle, for those who don't know, $240,000. And then on the higher end, people could be making around a million dollars a year. So when you look at Valve and the public numbers not, well, the numbers not being so public, You come to realize that it would be such a positive marketing strategy to be like, look how well we're taking care of our employees. Because as you can tell with Microsoft, with Sony, even with Nintendo, their employees are being laid off left and right, even with, well, not really Xbox, but with Sony's success, employees are still getting laid off. Developers are still getting laid off. So when you come to Valve and how they're treating their employees, I think it's very much an indication on why they've been on top for so long. when you look at the historical peaks of Steam specifically starting in 2010 they had around

2.9 million peak concurrent users right you come to realize a decade later a decade and six months later well six years later you basically had such a mammoth of a jump to where now you're around 43 million so now you come to realize what were the biggest drivers in this even happening in the first place and of course when you look at steam from a gaming aspect you had counter strike two that approximately had 1.4 million players you had dota two that had approximately 1 million players pub g battlegrounds that has around 714 000 players um as far we're just talking about like average like daily peaks we're not talking about oh once and then they just that's just the overall total now we're talking about average

like people who come back to the game and then you have Aeon 2 hopefully I'm saying that right that had nearly 398,000 following its global free to play MMO launch and then you had Deadlock that had approximately 262,000 during

an update driven spike and of course some of the other gaming some of the other gaming IPs that definitely helps out with Steam's revenue or just engagement in general is Apex Legends 5M which is GTA RP road playing server. You have war dogs,

Valheim, and Arc Raiders. So what you come to realize is the reason why they hit this concurrent peak is because not only are they having legacy acts like Dota 2 and Counter Strike 2

topping the charts. But then of course you have newer IPs coming into the fray, whether it's War Dogs, whether it's Aeon 2, which we're going to get into that specifically in the future, in the near future. and then of course arc raiders i mean there's a lot of newer games that's coming to these

pc that's coming to the pc platform and ultimately helping valve and steam to the point where they are breaking even more records because i don't think the people who are saying that gaming is dead i don't think that's the ultimate majority anymore as far as the verbiage because you start to see the statistics you start to see the high quality games in a plethora of multitude of genres, right? And then you come to realize that people who have that type of rhetoric that gaming is dead was never a fan of gaming in the first place because there's so many offerings in just a year of 2026 alone. And we haven't even had GTA6 yet. So basically when it comes to Steam and Valve specifically, all of these numbers is just to let you know

that what started off as an anti-chee, anti-piracy infrastructure for certain titles like Counterstrike, for certain titles like Half-Life 2 turned into one of the biggest infrastructures in gaming history, right? Because, of course, already talking about the employees as far as them having around 300 people, right, employees, right? And then for them to bring in roughly $17 billion, which is basically like $46,000, to 50 million in annual platform revenue per employee, you come to realize that they are making and generating money hand over fist, which is why when you look at certain other companies laying off their employees with massive success, you come to realize that Valve is one of the few companies left that has massive success and doesn't automatically say, oh, let's let's let go

of all our employees, right? Or let's cut some employees to receive even more revenue. so that's another thing that helps out with steam in general now because of what you're seeing on the screen analytic dreams video on spotify to see the video along with the audio of course we have to get into the steam machine i know that ain't who i think it is as ladies and gentlemen when it comes to the steam machine specifically of course it came out and the price wasn't the greatest right a lot of people were saying that the price was too egregious as far as it was a thousand for the base edition with no controller, 1300 for everything included.

And when you look at other reports, it's slated to say, well, no, slated, it's estimated to have solid numbers, but it's very much not like a boom of success, like the PS5 or the Xbox 360. Basically, it's not doing terrible.

But of course, via the price, point a lot of people are hesitant on getting the steam machine at all because one if you're going to pay that amount to save up the extra 500 for actual PC build right instead of getting the steam machine which you know granted it does look nice to have that small infrastructure with quote unquote PC capabilities but for the most part if you save up that extra four to 500 you'll be way you'd be better off because you can customize it even more steam machine you cannot customize at all as far as the internal infrastructure which with PC you could change the GPU you could change the motherboard you could change the RAM but the steam machine is such a

set piece of hardware that the price point was egregious because of course it was supposed to be a beginner friendly PC bill and it came out as at a price point of a thousand dollars without a controller so that was unfortunate so it didn't do well as far as the sales of course when you look at the Steam deck now that's a whole other discussion because I've already talked about I think I've talked about the Steam deck a bunch of times let me see steam deck uh steam so I talked about the steam machine I haven't talked about the steam deck I guess I just talked about that throughout my coverage of gaming but when you look at the steam deck specifically it's doing phenomenal I mean it's one of the biggest products as far as successes the the biggest in-house

product ever as far as you have the steam deck you have the sales for that being around 11,000 to 18,000 as far as the rise of fame and then in the year of 2025 into now into current day the sales have declined 80 percent but of course when you look at those figures specifically you come to realize that's amid the ram and storage shortages which is why the price increased to approximately $780 to $949. Basically, the original price was $400 to $650. The reason why I'm giving this range is because that's the range you could get the steam deck in, you know, as far as our resellers

and things that nature. But because of the RAM and storage shortages, you come to realize that once again, when you look at the steam machine, people are not willing to pay that higher price, and once again, when you have that higher price, now you're just like I was talking about with the steam machine. Once you have a higher price, you're now competing with hardware

that is more value for that specific price point that you're at to give examples. With the Steam Deck raising its price, now you have to start comparing it to handheld PCs, like the AISRogg ally, like the Lenovo Legion Go and like the MSI claw. And of course, when you look at the capabilities, some of those handheld PCs just came out recently

and they're around the same price point. So why not go at those versus the Steam Deck? So anyways, the engagement for the Steam Deck lowering by 80% is simply due to the RAMs shortages and the storage shortages. because, of course, that ends up making you raise the price because you don't have as many, so you don't want to just sell out, right?

So let's increase the price. It's the only option you have. Can't increase the product because of the shortages, so let's increase the price. So anyways, people just not buying it. You know what I mean? How about it? How's that for a cost and effect?

Isn't that crazy? That's insane. Just look at the state of gaming. Like, what is going on? All these companies looking at the RAM and storage shortages saying to themselves, I have a brilliant idea. What if we just raised the prices,

running out of hardware and then they don't sell you guys oh man they think that was going to happen huh so anyways uh what it comes about obviously that's just a drop in the bucket as far as the amount of revenue that that they've lost but when it comes to the ram and storage shortages that is a huge obstacle that they're going to have to address at some point or i keep watching the sales just to replenish for the steam deck because the steam machine is still selling at a solid rate is not impressive but it's not straight up a disaster it's very much a medium type of sale um pace for the steam machine but for the uh steam deck of course is lowered is it's fallen approximately 80 percent because of the price and ongoing supply shortages so anyways as far as the

valve steam uh as far as the valve company as a whole i did just want to get into how it ultimately broke records in the company as far as all-time concurrent user record. I wanted to talk about why that happened because 43.5 million concurrent users is insane, however you slice it. And I wanted to break down some of the games that attributed to this because older legacy games cannot accomplish this type of record-breaking number for Steam, which is why I brought up AAR2, which is why I brought up war dogs, which is why I brought up deadlock. Some of these newer games, which is why I brought up Arc Raiders, some of these newer games that's notoriously affecting the masses combined with the legacy acts, I mean, it's just good for the league as a whole as far as the gaming

league. So with that being said, that was basically as far as my steam deep doubt. Hopefully I enjoyed, you know, your TED Talk by analytic dreams, you know what I'm saying? So with that be saying click my link to show my bio to follow me on my social medias and if you're on spotify make sure to comment down below what do you like most about being a pc gamer and of course if you have a steam deck what do you like most about your personal steam deck