Valve
Over half of the games released on Steam were launched in the past three years
58% of all the games on Steam were only released on the platform during the past three years, and less than half of those have surpassed $1000 in revenue.
A detailed report on consumer habits and video game releases on Steam reveals that more than half of the games released on Valve’s platform have been released in the last three years. And it does not end there: more than half of the games available on the platform have not raised even a thousand dollars throughout its life cycle. Below we tell you more:
More than half of the games released on Steam are less than three years old and have earned less than a thousand dollars
According to data published in the GameDiscover newsletter, more than 50% of the games released on Valve’s digital store have grossed less than a thousand dollars in its life cycle, which is the period of time from its launch to the present. On the other hand, more than 41,000 video games have been released on Steam in the last three years, which is 58% of those currently available on the platform. Among these new releases is Counter-Strike 2.
Something that has a lot to do with these figures is the fact that to publish a video game on Steam you need to pay a fee of only one hundred dollars, as we can see on the website itself.
The conclusions that GameDiscover draws by putting the data on the table are the following:
- Most games that make less than $5,000 are small hobby projects. These more modest games are created by very small teams, sometimes just one person, who make them for a pure hobby and to improve their skills, and the profits generated are an extra and not a business model in itself.
- Most developers who create successful games are small studios. There are many success stories on Steam arising from the previous category, either due to the quality of the game itself or because some famous streamer gives it a very strong boost in visibility, as was the case with Only Up!, currently removed from Steam by decision of its creator.
- The PC ecosystem has eliminated generations. Now consumers have a single game library instead of having to buy another machine as with different generations of consoles.
- New games that are successful are increasing year after year since 2019. The “metric” that has been used to define a success story is having generated more than $10,000 in the first three months after launch.
Catastrophic forecasts are suffocated by data. And the data doesn’t lie: modest releases by small studios are in good health thanks to digital stores like Valve’s.