More than 500 games earned over $3 million in gross revenue on Steam in 2023 for the first time ever.
Valve shared the news in its Steam Annual Summary for 2023 and noted that’s more than double the number of titles that passed the same threshold back in 2018.
The number was touted by Valve as a metric of Steam’s growing reach, and although the company didn’t discuss specific titles it did claim that a “wide array of games” are finding success.
“The diversity of genres, mechanics, and studios finding success on Steam is another indicator of platform growth. Every month we publicly track the top 20 new releases by revenue, and the top five most-played new release free-to-play titles,” said Valve.
“In 2023, more than a quarter of those new releases were from studios releasing a game on Steam for the very first time, and those new studios hailed from more than two dozen different countries.”
Steam hit concurrent user records in 2023
Valve noted that Steam also topped 33 million concurrent users for the first time during 2023 and said its seasonal sale events (such as the Autumn Sale) delivered “healthy growth” in terms of both revenue earned and the number of releases crossing key revenue milestones.
For instance, Valve said the number of titles that earned over $1 million in revenue during the Autumn Sale increased by 21 percent from 2022 to 2023. As the table below shows, there were similar upticks across the board, suggesting that more titles were making more money during seasonal sales last year.
According to Valve, those seasonal sales were also “enormous drivers” of gifting through digital means and via physical wallet cards sold at retail stores.
“Physical cards are some of the most expensive payment methods we support, but we continue to invest in them because of the massive benefit to developers: a customer can use cash to acquire a wallet card if they don’t have access to other payment methods, and non-Steam users can buy wallet cards for holiday gift-giving at traditional stores, opening up an enormous additional source of revenue for game developers,” said Valve.
“In the holiday gift-giving period of December 20 to December 31, 2023, players redeemed more than $80 million in physical wallet cards.”
Offering a more succinct summary, Valve described 2023 as a “landmark year” for its popular platform. There’s a sense that more titles found more success than ever before, and earlier this year it was estimated that over 14,000 new releases landed on Steam in 2023 alone. It’ll be fascinating to see how Steam developers fare during 2024 in what looks to be an increasingly competitive market.
