2024 is nearly over. Within the ultimate throes of what has been a horrible 12 months for the video games trade and the media that covers it, however an excellent one by way of the variety of high quality video games that had been launched, we will lastly look again at some uncooked information about our favorite interest.
Nicely, at the least so far as Steam is worried. Which, contemplating how dominant Valve’s platform is on PC, it’s a reasonably correct image of the trade.
Steam information aggregator SteamDB, a web site that everybody (ourselves included) has used to trace how effectively each new launch has been doing, and whether or not this or that highly-anticipated sequel managed to match or beat its predecessor in participant numbers, has launched its end-of-year outcomes.
The stats web page offers a reasonably transient, basic have a look at the state of recreation releases on Steam in 2024. In response to SteamDB, 18,949 new video games had been launched on Steam this 12 months, beating final 12 months’s 14,310 by fairly a margin. In reality, with one exception, the variety of new video games every year has climbed effectively above the 12 months prior.
The leap between 2023 and 2024, nevertheless, will be the largest but for a single 12 months, indicating that the litter and discoverability issues will stay in 2025 and past. These figures, after all, embrace every thing launched that 12 months, together with free video games, experiments, joke video games, pupil initiatives and video games you and I could by no means hear of.
The report additionally reveals that of the almost 19,000 new video games, solely 3,973 had been well-liked sufficient to be rolled into Steam profile options, permitting them to supply collectible Buying and selling Playing cards, emojis and different customisation objects. Solely these video games’ achievements may rely in the direction of a person’s complete, too.
In essence, solely 3,973 managed to get observed by gamers for Valve to permit them to entry these prolonged options, which is a bit over 20% of all video games launched in 2024 on the platform. The excellent news is that it’s a determine that has been rising yearly, too, so the viewers’s capability for brand spanking new titles is rising, if solely barely.
