Games released on Steam in 2019 have had more success than ever. In a current data analysis of all new Steam releases, Valve has therefore determined itself: In the past, they would probably never have published the majority of today's successful titles on their platform.
According to the Steam operator, take today over 1,000 games over $ 10,000 in the first two weeks after release. And these are exclusively premium titles – Free2Play games are not even considered here.
How successful are Steam titles?
2019 also reached 18 percent more games hit this targetthan was the case in 2018. And that despite the fact that roughly the same number of titles were published in both years.
According to Steam Spy, there were 8,198 releases in 2018. In 2019, 8,128 games were released on Steam. Almost an eighth of all releases make it into the success title category.
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»We stood in the way of innovative games«
In the face of this statistic, Valve admits that this success never been possible in the past of Steam would. Before 2012, employees decided which titles were allowed to be sold on the distribution platform and which weren't. This process was only automated in the years thereafter. The reason:
"We noticed that we were probably in the way of many innovative games, and players wanted more variety in the games they get on Steam."
The result was Steam Greenlight, which drastically increased the number of titles on the distribution platform. Steam Direct followed in 2017, which further simplified the publication process and made it more accessible. With the old course – the team says – there would have been less than 50 percent of the currently successful releases. You can see the difference in the following picture:
How does Steam help you find games?
With the large amount of games on Steam, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find interesting titles. A common criticism of users is that many good games go under in the sheer mass.
To fix this problem Valve recently started using AI. The goal is to find out what kind of game you like based on the titles you play. After testing this feature for a while in Steam Labs, it has become an integral part of the Steam store for some time.