Valve's lifetime retail sales revealed

[Blink]

Over at Gamasutra they have revealed the overall sales of the Half-Life and Counter-strike series since Valve were formed in 1998. However this is only the retail side, as Valve have refused to reveal the digital sales figures which I imagine could be a lot higher than the retail figures:

Part of Half-Life's success can be attributed to the phenomenally popular Counter-Strike, which originally appeared as a free Half-Life mod. Sold separately, Counter-Strike sold 4.2 million units at retail in its Half-Life-derived incarnation, while the updated Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and rebuilt Counter-Strike: Source sold 2.9 million and 2.1 million units respectively. The Xbox port of the game sold 1.5 million units.

Half-Life 2, released in 2004, has sold 6.5 million units at retail. The 2006 followup Half-Life 2: Episode One sold 1.4 million units at retail. Half-Life 2 marked the beginning of Valve's practice of releasing its titles simultaneously at retail and via its Steam digital distribution service.

Check out the full article at Gamasutra.

[FlynT]

And everyone Dollar they've made is well deserved!

[Bema]

Can anyone give me a proper reason they won't release the digital figures? It's honestly something I can't quite understand. Maybe im missing something?

[dissonance]

Can anyone give me a proper reason they won't release the digital figures? It's honestly something I can't quite understand. Maybe im missing something?

You know how "ooooooga booga" topsecret valve is. They like keeping everything under wraps until about two months after it's due out.

[Bema]

Can anyone give me a proper reason they won't release the digital figures? It's honestly something I can't quite understand. Maybe im missing something?

You know how "ooooooga booga" topsecret valve is. They like keeping everything under wraps until about two months after it's due out.

lol

[mat_de_b]

Might inspire competition? Im guessingh the profit margin on digital distribution is ALOT higher... so by not realising it no one really knows how worthwhile it is...

[ghost12332]

They're keeping the DD sales for the publisher presentations and such.

[Bema]

I don't care how much money it makes them, I just want to see if the digital sales are really as big as everyone thinks.

+ I hardly think the secrecy/anti-competition has anything to do with it. Valve will have talked to most (if not all) of the big companies with an aim to getting their games on Steam. Those companies will have been told exactly how good Steam is.

Garry (of Garry's Mod) revealed he's sold 300,000+ copies of the game on Steam to date, makes me wonder even more why Valve have kept quiet.

[Oakley]

Maybe they just don't like boasting! hah.

Thinking about it I really can't see why the wouldn't want to reveal the info, could it actually do ANY harm at all? I can only see it encouraging other devs to support it and it promoting Valves success. The only obvious reason I could see them not revealing would be if the sales figures were lower than retail, but I would find that extremely hard to believe after all this hype!

[the_irate_pirate]

Can anyone give me a proper reason they won't release the digital figures? It's honestly something I can't quite understand. Maybe im missing something?

I'm gonna guess and say it's because Valve doesn't want to reveal all their cards. They'd rather have everyone guessing. I'm quite sure, though, that sales through Steam are higher than retail sales when it comes to most Valve games.