Steam in 2017: Over $5 billion in revenue, 291M accounts, 21K games released - Sensationalist Headlines

https://galyonk.in/steam-in-2017-129c0e6be260 The following article is based on the presentation I gave at GDC 2018. The data was gathered during February 2018 and by now is probably slightly outdated. Steam Spy only tracks owners and players, not sales. Steam Spy doesn’t track DLCs or MTXs.It’s impossible to distinguish between games sold on Steam, sold elsewhere and given away for free. For purposes of this article we’re measuring the market Steam controls, not the sales coming directly through Steam. Steam Spy tracks users playing games, not idling in the Steam client or botting trading cards. 2017 was the best year for Valve so far. Every single metric you can imagine grew: the overall number of games sold, the audience, the total revenue and so on. 4.3 billion in revenue, Add f2p titles and in-app purchases to this number and you’re looking at the total number well over $5B. Of course not all of this revenue comes through Valve, a sizable portion of sales happens through 3rd-party sites and even in retail. The size of the market controlled by a single private company is still amazing. By the end of 2017, Steam had 291M that have played at least one game at least once. 22% of them joined in 2017, so if you were worried that Steam only appeals to the aging core demographics — it’s not. We don’t know the age distribution for sure, Steam has been adding more and more new users every year and is far from slowing down. 57M people played anything on Steam in the last two weeks. Steam is smaller than some single games (like Minecraft or League of Legends) but it’s certainly huge nevertheless. New players are buying less games than the old ones, especially with the majority of them joining from developing countries like China or Philippines. 1 as a median number of owned games might seem low, it should be noted that if the players retain and continue using Steam, they’ll likely buy more. Steam sales are skewed to the top with just 100 games (0.5% of all) accounting for 50% of total revenue. It’s probably even more skewed if we add in-app purchases and free-to-play titles. Pretty interesting article on the stats of Steam. https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*vYk8qNMiGc7f5yrTIfwj9g.jpeg

Fuck me, Direct is useless at stopping the stream of shit from steam isn't ituj?

i feel like the color of the graph is fitting for what you said

Why not to become a Indie game developer: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*IR9EtMI1VBNkkJKeXz9ITg.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*Y5AXu6JKfUztx5dwP595Iw.jpeg Literally how does a serious indie dev even survive these days? This is below minimum-wage revenue.

Ironic in that what I assume was Valve trying to help small indie devs by giving them easy access to Steam resulted in too many games, which means people would stick to big titles and already big indies.

Doesn't help that the flow of games is comprised in its majority of utter garbage.

wow looks like a bubble to me

I think there's been even higher trash acceptance rate since steam direct became a thing

Think that 5billion doesn't even scratch the surface considering the huge market of items etc that they cant track.

$5b revenue on a single year and they took this fucking long to implement HiDPI, and still didn't properly implement trackpad scrolling or minimal touchscreen support? Jeez...

I think it's getting pretty deflated with all the shovelware "indie games" that are being released non-stop on Steam.

They way Valve works means everything is slow, unless a bunch of employees personally want something to happen.

2017, $5 billion, 291M accounts, 21k games 2017 + 5 + 291 + 21 = 2334 2 + 3 + 3 + 4 = 12 1 + 2 = 3 surely this is no coincidence?

I know a small dev team that's trying to make ends meet and they have an incredible idea for a new game but I'm really worried about how they're going to break out when all you see on Steam nowadays is an endless stream of shit, and that graph really doesn't reassure me in the least. This meme is as dead as HL3's development.

No wonder the Nintendo Switch is becoming a big platform for indies now. There's just too much shit to compete with on Steam, and Nintendo is this little blue ocean with smaller fish. I'm not sure if their store is designed better so that games can give more info quicker and less negative info, but I find it easier to commit to buying a small indie game on the Switch than on Steam. I can't remember which dev it was that stated they made more sales on Switch than the entire time they've been on Steam, but that looks like the place to go for indie devs. I mean I may just be extrapolating here based on my personal experience but I've bought (and actually played) many more indie games on my Switch than on my PC (where I'd get a ton of indie games for $1 and never play them). Steam is basically where I play PC only games, graphically intese games, or shooter games, while my Switch is my Nintendo/Indie platform. I think Steam is at the point where it won't really lose out having smaller indie devs make money elsewhere (with how cheap it is to publish most devs will double dip on the Switch if they can), but they will have to worry if other clients get better. Battle.Net, Origin and UPlay are slowly improving and adding more features with cleaner interfaces, and more games require a specific launcher to play regardless of where you buy it so install bases on other platforms are growing. If platforms like Battle.Net (which already seem to have better chat functionality) get similar features like Steam Workshop, guides, community, etc. then I can see people being less inclined to buy stuff on Steam. Discord is already replacing Steam as the chat program of choice for a lot of gamers, so if Steam no longer has an iron grip on specific features people may be more likely to buy games elsewhere, especially if third parties like GMG or key sellers start selling keys for other clients more readily. Valve has been coasting on Steam's success and if they don't start to put more effort into their client and storefront I don't know if it will continue in the next decade.

There's a good 10 years of life left in it

I feel like having 21k games released in one year is not a good thing.

Well, that's 1500 per game. This makes more sense when you consider how games unfortunately work now and the giant spike on the end of the chart.

It's the total number of steam games, though a large percentage were released last year, 7K.

Well what's the game..?

Well there's always GoG, though your game really needs to stand out for them to accept it on that library. It's funny, really. People always wanted every indie dev to have a chance and now Steam is a shitshow. Strict(er) alternatives are actually more favorable now.

They seem adamantly against forbidding a single good game on the store when they could get that one game on the store by letting everything in.

Obviously, it costs the same amount of money and is just per-game until your games do good enough. But Direct is definitely better than Greenlight.

money doesn't fix bad staff management

It's not that they can't afford a moderation system for greenlight with $5b. It's why would they even care to moderate greenlight with $5b. Apathy is Valve in one word today.

We really need competition at this point, especially for the sake of indies.

The fact that a company can generate so much revenue with minimal input is astonishing to say the least.

The whole client is a dumpster fire, really

$5B in revenue. That's a $10M salary for each of the 500 people who work there. Why would they ever want to actually make games again?

Steam is too big to fail, but it could possibly enter a total rut where it's only surviving because of the existing games on it.