2024 is almost over. In the final throes of what has been a terrible year for the games industry and the media that covers it, but good in terms of the number of quality games that were released, we can finally look back at some raw data on our favorite. hobby.
Well, at least as far as Steam is concerned. Which, considering how dominant Valve’s platform is on PC, is a pretty accurate picture of the industry.
Steam data aggregator SteamDB, a site that everyone (including us) has used to track how well each new release has done and whether this or that long-awaited sequel managed to match or surpass its predecessor in player count, has launched its finale. -Results of the year.
The stats page gives a fairly brief overview of the state of game releases on Steam in 2024. According to SteamDB, 18,949 new games were released on Steam this year, surpassing last year’s 14,310 by a wide margin. In fact, with one exception, the number of new games each year has increased well above the previous year.
However, the jump between 2023 and 2024 may be the largest yet recorded in a single year, indicating that disorder and discoverability problems will persist into 2025 and beyond. These figures, of course, include everything released that year, including free games, experiments, joke games, student projects, and games you and I may never hear about.
The report also reveals that of the nearly 19,000 new games, only 3,973 were popular enough to be included in Steam’s profile features, allowing them to offer collectible trading cards, emojis, and other customization items. Only achievements from those games could also count toward the user’s total.
In essence, only 3,973 managed to get the attention of Valve players to allow them access to these extended features, which represents just over 20% of all games released in 2024 on the platform. The good news is that it is a figure that has also been increasing each year, so the audience capacity for new titles is growing, even slightly.
