We’re all doomed! Time is running out! What will stop the death of PC games? Perhaps continuing to get bigger each year, with a 20% annual rise in revenue in the already enormous market could help. Once again, our favourite format failed to meet the expectations of the publishing industry, and went and sold billions of dollars worth of games. What is it like, eh?

The PC Gaming Alliance (the scraps of it that remain, anyway) has published a “Horizons” report. Ahhhhhh, horizons. I feel like having a little weep of contentedness. In it they reveal that the PC market scored $16.2 billion in revenue in 2010. Sell your PS3, it is OUR DAY.

Of that money more than a quarter came from China alone, responsible for $4.8bn. But then they also have a fifth of the population of the planet living there, so that’s about right, really. Another 7.3bn, according to some rugged chap called Alec Meer on Games Industry, came from the UK, US, Germany, Korea and Japan. Which is an increase of 19%.

I’m not sure it’s altogether too helpful that an organisation named “The PC Gaming Alliance” should choose the frame the news as following:

“The global PC games market continues to show surprisingly strong growth in 2010, reaching a record $16.2 billion.”

“Surprising”? That inspires confidence.

“The spotlight has definitely shifted back to the PC game market,” says the PCGA president, Matt Ployhar, going on to cite digital distribution and free to play models. He then added, “along with game formats embracing the shifts occurring in the evolution of the PC ecosystem to remain more profitable”, which made me do a bit of sick.

Of course, you have to assume a bit of guestimating to these figures, what with Valve still (madly) refusing to release Steam sale figures. With around 70% of the digital market, that’s a hefty chunk to be guessing at. But there’s little doubt the PC is thriving, against all the inane wittering of idiots.

And they’re optimistic. The report, only available to those in the super-expensive PCGA club, says that they expect the business to continue growing, reaching $23bn by spaceyear 2014.

So there you go. Next time someone tells you that PC gaming is dying – well, do what you did before – delete them from your friends list, cross them off your Christmas card list, and add them to your Shitlist.