The hat economy: Digital goods revenue grows as Valve expands tools for developers and community

Valve sees the future of gaming as a collaboration between developers and its community, and that vision is already producing results.

The Half-Life publisher, which operates the popular Steam digital-distribution platform for PC, Mac, and Linux games, expanded its developer and community tools for creating and selling virtual items recently. This will enable more companies and more outside creators to earn money on Steam, and we can already see evidence of that demand. In-game item sales make up $94 million of digital PC revenues, according to research firm SuperData. That is a majority of that market, and it is up 13 percent year-over-year. With more games going free-to-play — and even premium-priced titles looking for ways to maximize profits — this sector is only going to get bigger.