Steam had 13.5 million 'new first-time purchasers' between January and May

Valve's business development head Jan-Peter Ewert says Steam had 13.5 million "new first-time purchasers" in the first few months of 2018. 

Speaking at the Business Conference for Games Industry event in Russia this week, Ewert tied this figure—around 3.375 million new buyers per month between January 1 and April 30—to Steam's recent increase in supported currencies. Ewert suggested Steam's increase in supported payment methods is designed to benefit developers, and that this figure has risen from 40 in 2014 to over 80 methods this year.  

Outlined by indie developer Michael Kuzmin—who also quizzed Ewert about Steam Spy and Valve's potential alternative plans—Ewert said Steam's peak concurrent user total sat between five and ten million in 2014, but is now shy of 20 million. Likewise, the platform's daily active users have nearly quadrupled in that time—from over 10 million to over 40 million. 

Speaking to the language split of Steam users, Ewert's slides peg English and Simplified Chinese at around one third of total users respectively—which is outlined here: 

Find Ewert's "first new first-time purchasers" slide below, and check out Kuzmin's thread in full this way.