Published , by Brittany Vincent
Published , by Brittany Vincent
Want to hear something unsurprising? Steam is doing gangbusters when it comes to developers making money off of their games. There are thousands of new games heading to the platform each game, which can make it seem as though there are fewer opportunities for creators to earn. But just the opposite is happening, it seems, as most games tend to be succeeding on the platform – in fact, more so than ever.
Valve undertook its own investigation across several different statistics to see what the numbers were really doing. It took a look at the number of new games that earned at least $10,000 over the first two weeks of their debut. The number of games that met this criteria leapt up from 2013 to 2015 after Valve introduced Steam Greenlight, and then even further with 2017's release of Steam Direct.
Right now, though, more games than ever are reaching $10,000 during their first two weeks on the platform. "As the graph shows, the number of games meeting this success measure has increased pretty consistently over time, with an 18% increase in 2019 compared to 2018," Valve explained. "That increase wasn’t just due to a larger number of games on the platform — the proportion of games meeting success increased by 11% in 2019."
Spending is also up for successful games, with most games overall making more money. Valve investigated the median for earnings, where it was revealed that half of new releases on Steam ended up earning more and half of them earned less during their first two weeks on the platform.
"We found that the median game released in 2019 earned 24% more during its first two weeks of sales than the median release in 2018," Valve explained in its blog.
The bottom line? Steam is doing well – and so are those who end up using it to distribute their titles.