Valve announced today that its digital-distribution platform, Steam, now has over 25 million accounts worldwide.

"Steam turned five years old in March 2009," said Valve co-founder Gabe Newell. "With the introduction of each new platform feature released over the years — such as the Steam Community, Steam Cloud, and Steamworks — we've seen corresponding growth in account numbers, concurrent player numbers and developer support for the platform.

"As such, we plan to continue to expand and grow the platform to better serve the developers supporting the open platform and millions of gamers logging in each day."

Valve also revealed that Steam has over 1,000 games from over 100 developers and publishers, with 2009 being one of the service's best years yet. Sales for last year were up 205%, making it the fifth straight year in which unit sales were up over 100% year-over-year.

Think Services Game Group today announced that Valve co-founder Gabe Newell will be honored at the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards. The award Newell will receive is the Pioneer Award, which is given to individuals "responsible for developing a vital technology or game design at a crucial juncture in video game history, paving the way for the many who followed them."

Newell is being given the award "for his work in co-creating the PC key digital download service Steam, and helping to make possible some of the most important video games of the past two decades - from the Half-Life series through Portal to Team Fortress and beyond." He will collect his award in March at GDC 2010.

Day one of Team Fortress 2's "war" has passed. The soldier is still in the lead, but today, Valve announced a new "Propaganda Contest," which could allow the demo's to get back in the game, and it allows people who don't even have TF2 to contribute.

Luckily, you can help. Contribute to the war effort by designing a propaganda poster focused on the brave/cold-hearted Soldier/Demomen and his heroic/cowardly fight against the square-jawed/craven Soldier/Demoman—thus inspiring new casualties and feeding our all-consuming thirst for war.

First prize will be an in-game hat that only the winner gets, and it's engraved with the winner's name. Second and third place prizes will not "be nearly as cool as the first prize, but will ALSO be one-of-a-kind items (just not as good)." 25 runners-up will "get the MANN CO PRIZE PACKAGE, which isn’t one-of-a-kind but is nonetheless free."

Gabe Newell himself will also be judging posters and giving kill points to whichever side each poster is for.

Winners are announced Wednesday.