We have a nebulous idea of how big Steam is when it comes to PC gaming, but it is only when we get our hands on some of the mind-boggling figures that it becomes clearer.
Valve shared a stat with us via its annual summary compiled over 2023 that over 500 games grossed in more than $3 million dollars in the past year alone. Granted that was out of the over 14,000 that were launched, and you will be able to second-guess what some of those games were, but this is an industry we are constantly told is in crisis and needs to layoff tens of thousands of staff
Contrasting these figures, the Epic Games Store report showed us last week that it experienced a 13% decrease in spending on third-party games, totaling $310 million in 2023. This stark difference highlights Steam’s expansive reach, further emphasized by just how many games it brought to its storefront in 2023.
An intriguing tidbit from the report is Steam’s global reach, extending even to Antarctica. Over the last week alone, the platform delivered 200GB of installs and updates to the continent, suggesting even the most remote users are not beyond the reach of Steam’s extensive library.
The report is huge and worth picking through if you have time, but there were also other interesting things that lept out. A new security update was pushed out to provide an extra layer of defense “before build updates go out to customers, guarding against cases where a developer’s machine or account has been compromised.”
Also, with the addition of many adult-themed games, we finally got the ability to hide certain, more dubious niches from our shared libraries and activity logs, meaning I, I mean you, can now squirrel away all those waifu titles you bought late at night when you felt lonely.
