In our second installment of an analysis of the Steam network, we look at the languages and operating systems within Steam’s community. In May, 2004, Steam was a predominantly English platform; however, only 60 percent of desktops surveyed in February of 2008 were English.

Most of Steam has run on Windows XP. Windows 98 and 2000 was present during the early days, and Vista is slowly being adopted by gamers.

The Steam community is quickly moving towards broadband access.

* Part 1: Part 1: Valve’s Steam Survey of 1M+ Desktops & Their Components
* Part 2: The Valve Survey: Steam goes global
* Part 3: The Steam Survey: How much storage is out there?
* Part 4: The Steam survey: Our changing screens

Disclaimer: The components of gaming systems have changed greatly in four years. In 2004, for example, many video cards and drivers simply didn’t exist; while today, 4-year-old cards are obsolete. Valve also surveys different things over time, and the number of respondents varies from survey to survey. So while we’ve made an effort to normalize the data here, it may not be entirely statistically accurate.