Data Deep Dive: How are new releases on Steam performing? (Official blogpost from Valve)

[InquisitorAles]

We are constantly examining how the growth of Steam affects new titles and what it means for developers. Usually, our own internal questions mirror those of many in the development community.

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One of our goals is to be a platform where great games can realize success. So a natural place to start this analysis was to ask: Are more games finding success? Of course, "success" is different for each developer, so we looked at several different benchmarks of success in this analysis.

Regardless of how we defined success, though, we found that an increasing number of games were achieving it.

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We were encouraged by the results above - there are more hits than ever these days, and it looks like our decision to open the platform helped that happen. But we also wanted to study how releases across the distribution – such as the median release, the 25th percentile release, and the 75th percentile release – were doing. (The 'median release' is the game that half the releases did better than and half the releases did worse than. You could also call it the '50th percentile release.')

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Here's a summary of what we found:

• Over the years, there's been a continuous increase in the number of games achieving success on Steam. We'll dig into this in the first section below.
• Earnings prospects for most - but not all - games improved in 2019. We'll dig into this in the second section below.

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More at the link:

Steam :: Steamworks Development :: Data Deep Dive: How are new releases on Steam performing?

We are constantly examining how the growth of Steam affects new titles and what it means for developers. Usually, our own internal questions mirror those of many in the development community. In an effort to share some of our findings, we've put together the following post on how new releases...

steamcommunity.com

 

[eonden]

 

[LewieP]

Hey remember when a bunch of people who had no idea what they were talking about promoted a nonsense idea about some kind of "indiepocalypse"?

Where did that idea even come from anyway?

What a dangerous, misinformed, and given how history has played out, deeply suspicious notion that was.

 

[ThreepwoodMighty]

Steam is doing better and better. EA and Microsoft came back with full force. Ubisoft left.

 

[samred]

We at Ars got this info ahead of time and picked through what Valve did and did *not* disclose. Our analysis in full, courtesy of Kyle Orland:

Ars analysis: ~80% of Steam games earn under $5K in first two weeks

Valve offers a peek behind the sales curtain, telling an incomplete and mixed story.

arstechnica.com

Valve's selective view of the data leaves out a huge mass of games that make less than $5,000 in their first two weeks on Steam's virtual shelves. An Ars analysis finds those titles have made up the vast majority of Steam releases for the last five years.

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[AshenOne]

Give us the sale numbers you fucking cowards! These graphs fucking bore me and don't get into the nitty and gritty how each new and hot games ACTUALLY perform on steam which people here are mostly interested in.

 

[Parsnip]

Hey remember when a bunch of people who had no idea what they were talking about promoted a nonsense idea about some kind of "indiepocalypse"?

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Pepperidge farm remembers.

 

[LewieP]

Give us the sale numbers you fucking cowards! These graphs fucking bore me and don't get into the nitty and gritty how each new and hot games ACTUALLY perform on steam which people here are mostly interested in.

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They likely do not have permission from the developers and publishers to release that data.

 

[spam musubi]

We at Ars got this info ahead of time and picked through what Valve did and did *not* disclose. Our analysis in full, courtesy of Kyle Orland:

Ars analysis: ~80% of Steam games earn under $5K in first two weeks

Valve offers a peek behind the sales curtain, telling an incomplete and mixed story.

arstechnica.com

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Worth noting though is what those games actually look like. There are a ton of games that look like one person made it in a couple of hours batons out on steam. That doesn't contribute a meaningful data point to the conversation.

Just browsing through the completely unfiltered list of new releases, there is a lot of stuff that uses default unity assets and stuff like that.

Feed The Horsebear on Steam

Two snowmen jump with a potato plate from a platform to another. The snowmen have to take potatoes to horsebear.

store.steampowered.com

I don't mean any ill will towards these games, I hope the developers get an audience, but most people likely aren't aware of the nature of the hundreds of games releasing monthly and saying 80% of releases don't even make $5000 is potentially misleading without mentioning the potential appeal and price point of games.

 

[AshenOne]

They likely do not have permission from the developers and publishers to release that data.

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I still remember a few years ago they said that they'll have a similar tool akin to steam spy, release and yet they never did that all these years later. I really think and believe that the GDPR update's other purpose was to fuck up steam spy's accuracy and making all the profile settings private.

 

[Randomly Generated]

Give us the sale numbers you fucking cowards! These graphs fucking bore me and don't get into the nitty and gritty how each new and hot games ACTUALLY perform on steam which people here are mostly interested in.

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I doubt most developers are comfortable with that info being released.

 

[Earvin Infinity]

Steam is doing better and better. EA and Microsoft came back with full force. Ubisoft left.

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they'll comeback. They all do.

 

[Madjoki]

We at Ars got this info ahead of time and picked through what Valve did and did *not* disclose. Our analysis in full, courtesy of Kyle Orland:

Ars analysis: ~80% of Steam games earn under $5K in first two weeks

Valve offers a peek behind the sales curtain, telling an incomplete and mixed story.

arstechnica.com

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So all these asset flips are making less and less? That's great news.

 

[LewieP]

Worth noting though is what those games actually look like. There are a ton of games that look like one person made it in a couple of hours batons out on steam. That doesn't contribute a meaningful data point to the conversation.

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There are also games that are not well marketed or just don't have any mass market appeal. Prior to greenlight and Steam direct, these types of games were just not allowed on Steam, they still existed.

 

[Delusibeta]

It looks like the revisions in Steam's recommendation algorithms in the past year have been broadly successful in spreading the wealth better for new releases. I did always think the "indiepocalypse" narrative was dubious, since it was based pretty much entirely on indie developers seeing Steam as a silver bullet, and then finding out that "game not available on Steam" wasn't the sole reason why their games failed commercially, and so they sought out alternative explainations why (with everyone generally converging on "the algorithm is burying my game", hence the last year of algorithm tweaks).

 

[samred]

Worth noting though is what those games actually look like. There are a ton of games that look like one person made it in a couple of hours batons out on steam. That doesn't contribute a meaningful data point to the conversation.

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Absolutely. And Valve doesn't meaningfully distinguish those, which makes it tough for anyone else picking through the data to do the same. We may do a follow-up piece about how products like shovelware and trading card bait do or don't figure into their "official" stats dump.

 

[eonden]

Absolutely. And Valve doesn't meaningfully distinguish those, which makes it tough for anyone else picking through the data to do the same. We may do a follow-up piece about how products like shovelware and trading card bait do or don't figure into their "official" stats dump.

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Wouldnt trading card bait be already over since the introduction of limitations of games that can have trading cards? (which I assume include a minimum "earnings" barrier)

 

[dex3108]

Give us the sale numbers you fucking cowards! These graphs fucking bore me and don't get into the nitty and gritty how each new and hot games ACTUALLY perform on steam which people here are mostly interested in.

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Since last year i think developers and publishers are free to release numbers. Valve doesn't have that permission.

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

Hey remember when a bunch of people who had no idea what they were talking about promoted a nonsense idea about some kind of "indiepocalypse"?

Where did that idea even come from anyway?

What a dangerous, misinformed, and given how history has played out, deeply suspicious notion that was.

Click to shrink...

If the idea was that indies would take over, that's silly.
If the idea was that indies would progressively shed as their games didn't sell. Then that's true. Happens all the time when people give up on their dreams.

 

[LewieP]

If the idea was that indies would take over, that's silly.
If the idea was that indies would progressively shed as their games didn't sell. Then that's true. Happens all the time when people give up on their dreams.

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The idea was that steam is flooded and indie devs can't find success on Steam any more.

There are more indie devs finding success on Steam than ever before.

 

[AbsoluteZero0K]

So all these asset flips are making less and less? That's great news.

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This is my conclusion as well

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

The idea was that steam is flooded and indie devs can't find success on Steam any more.

There are more indie devs finding success on Steam than ever before.

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Well, there are a lot more games on Steam. So that's good for the indies that find that success but that also does mean that some are drowned out, and perhaps in greater number just given the volume. Good, even great games that no one has even heard of sell next to nothing. And yeah, some of those devs just give up and focus full time on paid work in their main field :/

 

[LewieP]

Well, there are a lot more games on Steam. So that's good for the indies that find that success but that also does mean that some are drowned out, and perhaps in greater number just given the volume. Good, even great games that no one has even heard of sell next to nothing. And yeah, some of those devs just give up and focus full time on paid work in their main field :/

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Whereas in the past these games would have just been rejected from Steam entirely. Which was obviously a worse outcome than at least having a chance.

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

Whereas in the past these games would have just been rejected from Steam entirely. Which was obviously a worse outcome than at least having a chance.

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Ohhhhh okay. I was misunderstanding. So this was about the relaxed review method that allows games to be on steam. Yeah, greenlight was fucking awful and destroyed careers.

 

[dex3108]

Well, there are a lot more games on Steam. So that's good for the indies that find that success but that also does mean that some are drowned out, and perhaps in greater number just given the volume. Good, even great games that no one has even heard of sell next to nothing. And yeah, some of those devs just give up and focus full time on paid work in their main field :/

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Maybe samred can ask some indie developers who released game exclusively on Epic Store how they did (excluding Epics money, just sales). After all Epic was really loud about Epis Store being better for indie devs.

 

[LewieP]

Ohhhhh okay. I was misunderstanding. So this was about the relaxed review method that allows games to be on steam. Yeah, greenlight was fucking awful and destroyed careers.

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What? It gave so many more developers a chance. It did the exact opposite of destroying careers.

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

Maybe samred can ask some indie developers who released game exclusively on Epic Store how they did (excluding Epics money, just sales). After all Epic was really loud about Epis Store being better for indie devs.

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Yeah I'd be curious to hear about that too as well as Switch. Slightly related, from what I've been told, Nintendo Switch has been feast for famine. That storefront is a fucking nightmare and they just don't have a good curation process. I guess Wii U was actually pretty good given how limited and content stared the audience was.

 

[Shelbyville Milhouse]

I still remember a few years ago they said that they'll have a similar tool akin to steam spy, release and yet they never did that all these years later. I really think and believe that the GDPR update's other purpose was to fuck up steam spy's accuracy and making all the profile settings private.

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SteamSpy is run by a guy working for Epic so it's kinda understandable

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

What? It gave so many more developers a chance. It did the exact opposite of destroying careers.

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Only repeating was I was told but it was a prolonged and confusing system that also added stigma to greenlight games. Once again, just saying what I heard from a number of devs.

 

[AshenOne]

SteamSpy is run by a guy working for Epic so it's kinda understandable

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Well yeah but this was all way before he announced it and before egs came into existence.

 

[Shelbyville Milhouse]

Well yeah but this was all way before he announced it and before egs came into existence.

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Just because he hadn't announced it doesn't mean Valve didn't know about it.
But that's pure speculation on my part, nothing substantial

 

[Pryme]

Hey remember when a bunch of people who had no idea what they were talking about promoted a nonsense idea about some kind of "indiepocalypse"?

Where did that idea even come from anyway?

What a dangerous, misinformed, and given how history has played out, deeply suspicious notion that was.

Click to shrink...

@samred's comment seems to come to a different conclusion. What's your take on that?

 

[eonden]

Yeah I'd be curious to hear about that too as well as Switch. Slightly related, from what I've been told, Nintendo Switch has been feast for famine. That storefront is a fucking nightmare and they just don't have a good curation process. I guess Wii U was actually pretty good given how limited and content stared the audience was.

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Switch had the usual gold-rush that happens once a new console launchs and the library is bare and the hardcore audience (the most likely to buy a console at launch) wants to play with their new tool. That also happened with PS4 and XBOne. The main thing is that once the library starts to fill up, the competition is much harsher and sales decrease a fuck ton.
The eShop is somewhat the worse shop of all the main ones on discoverability too lmao.

Only repeating was I was told but it was a prolonged and confusing system that also added stigma to greenlight games. Once again, just saying what I heard from a number of devs.

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Eh, there was no "greenlight mark" once the game launched on Steam. The main problem was that it transformed getting into the store into a popularity contest which was stupid. that was the main complain from devs (aka, making it somewhat more annoying to get into Steam).

 

[dex3108]

Yeah I'd be curious to hear about that too as well as Switch. Slightly related, from what I've been told, Nintendo Switch has been feast for famine. That storefront is a fucking nightmare and they just don't have a good curation process. I guess Wii U was actually pretty good given how limited and content stared the audience was.

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There was article about that last year i think, developers are actually selling games for pennies just to get visibility. it is fact that Steam is most advanced digital store to this date and that includes discoverability.

 

[LewieP]

Only repeating was I was told but it was a prolonged and confusing system that also added stigma to greenlight games. Once again, just saying what I heard from a number of devs.

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Certainly a handful of developers who were benefiting from the preexisting system that excluded many devs wanted to pull the ladder up behind them. That doesn't give an accurate impression of entire market as a whole. Try asking some developers who were excluded from Steam previously, but are now making a living from selling their games on Steam.

 

[AshenOne]

Just because he hadn't announced it doesn't mean Valve didn't know about it.
But that's pure speculation on my part, nothing substantial

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But lets be fucking honest.. valve doesn't care about EGS or trying to take action against devs or pubs who release games on steam or publish store pages only to not release their games on steam but a whole year later by making it exclusive to EGS.

They're literally sitting on their asses with the whole EGS thing and let it pass through which really gives me the impression that they just... don't care.

 

[Gush]

Well, there are a lot more games on Steam. So that's good for the indies that find that success but that also does mean that some are drowned out, and perhaps in greater number just given the volume. Good, even great games that no one has even heard of sell next to nothing. And yeah, some of those devs just give up and focus full time on paid work in their main field :/

Click to shrink...

While that's unfortunately a side-effect of the sheer volume of releases on steam, it's hard to think of an alternative that would be more beneficial to indie games at large. Curated storefronts, for instance, can be beneficial if you get the golden ticket but all those who don't are left in the cold due to their binary nature.

I think overall Valve has made the right decisions when it comes to this stuff, and I think the "Indiepocalypse" was always a misunderstanding. Indies were never dying, the wider pool of releases simply redistributed the revenue across a wider pool of developers. The main group hollering about it were those who found big success among smaller competition and couldn't see the forest for the trees when competition got bigger and broader.

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

Eh, there was no "greenlight mark" once the game launched on Steam. The main problem was that it transformed getting into the store into a popularity contest which was stupid. that was the main complain from devs (aka, making it somewhat more annoying to get into Steam).

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Bingo. And for some people it made it extremely easy to use their available networks to push through. For others they had to beg and beg and beg on social media. It was just awful.

 

[Tagyhag]

I'm honestly surprised that in general games are doing better.

Only because there's about what...5-10 games releasing daily on average? It's insane.

I mean, I'm happy for the devs! But it's still surprising.

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

There was article about that last year i think, developers are actually selling games for pennies just to get visibility. it is fact that Steam is most advanced digital store to this date and that includes discoverability.

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Hell yeah, that's how I got Superbeat: Xonic for a buck.

 

[Randomly Generated]

But lets be fucking honest.. valve doesn't care about EGS or trying to take action against devs or pubs who release games on steam or publish store pages only to not release their games on steam but a whole year later by making it exclusive to EGS.

They're literally sitting on their asses with the whole EGS thing and let it pass through which really gives me the impression that they just... don't care.

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I suspect they did care about SteamSpy, since not only was it an underhanded move by a competitor to do market research, but I'd imagine it made a lot of developers uncomfortable.

 

[Shelbyville Milhouse]

But lets be fucking honest.. valve doesn't care about EGS or trying to take action against devs or pubs who release games on steam or publish store pages only to not release their games on steam but a whole year later by making it exclusive to EGS.

They're literally sitting on their asses with the whole EGS thing and let it pass through which really gives me the impression that they just... don't care.

Click to shrink...

EA just came back to Steam
Microsoft puts all their games on Steam
Whether that's because Valve is doing something, we don't know. They aren't punishing devs for skipping Steam because they just don't care enough. Metro not being on Steam means shit-all for Valve.

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

Certainly a handful of developers who were benefiting from the preexisting system that excluded many devs wanted to pull the ladder up behind them. That doesn't give an accurate impression of entire market as a whole. Try asking some developers who were excluded from Steam previously, but are now making a living from selling their games on Steam.

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I believe you may be misunderstanding what I'm saying. I am not in any way defending the old greenlight system. It sucked balls and many developers had their careers brought full stop because they didn't get in. Greenlight ruined careers. Thankfully Itch was around for the others.

 

[SteveWinwood]

even though greenlight was awful it was still better than what was before it

just like direct has issues, but its still better than greenlight

and keep in mind what part of this most of their competitors are still at

 

[dex3108]

But lets be fucking honest.. valve doesn't care about EGS or trying to take action against devs or pubs who release games on steam or publish store pages only to not release their games on steam but a whole year later by making it exclusive to EGS.

They're literally sitting on their asses with the whole EGS thing and let it pass through which really gives me the impression that they just... don't care.

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Not really, read interview with Gabe from EDGE magazine. It caused them some headaches but they aare fine with competition and they are competing by doing other things because Valve will never start paying developers for exclusivity or similar things.

Steam main advantage are features. And i will point to you how Valve did nothing in past month or so and ended up in news almost every single week. They did that by just having one simple feature, Concurrent Users and Players counter.

 

[LewieP]

EA just came back to Steam
Microsoft puts all their games on Steam
Whether that's because Valve is doing something, we don't know. They aren't punishing devs for skipping Steam because they just don't care enough. Metro not being on Steam means shit-all for Valve.

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and games are not really selling very well on EGS anyway

Here's how much the biggest Epic Store exclusives of 2019 sold - PlayTracker Insight

Sales estimates for the top Epic Store games, using data from the XBOX API and figures disclosed by Epic and publishers

playtracker.net

Titles like Hades sold more units on Steam in one month than they did in one year of EGS exclusivity.

I believe you may be misunderstanding what I'm saying. I am not in any way defending the old greenlight system. It sucked balls and many developers had their careers brought full stop because they didn't get in. Greenlight ruined careers. Thankfully Itch was around for the others.

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I understand what you are saying, I am disagreeing with you. There's no evidence that greenlight, a change that was a massive shift towards democratising distribution, destroyed careers. It did the exact opposite.

 

[samred]

Maybe samred can ask some indie developers who released game exclusively on Epic Store how they did (excluding Epics money, just sales). After all Epic was really loud about Epis Store being better for indie devs.

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My DMs are open here and elsewhere. Go to samred on Twitter to find my Telegram contact info, as well. Devs don't necessarily love disclosing their sales figures, even privately, but we'll take whatever data game makers want to offer for the sake of more market transparency in our reports. Thanks.

 

[AshenOne]

EA just came back to Steam
Microsoft puts all their games on Steam
Whether that's because Valve is doing something, we don't know. They aren't punishing devs for skipping Steam because they just don't care enough. Metro not being on Steam means shit-all for Valve.

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Thats not the point. The point is.. they're not punishing devs/pubs for circumventing the ToS or even violating it.

The actual truth is.. they're in bed with the pubs and will take action when most of em bitch to them and start taking out features from steam. Region locking is one such thing they enforced.

They really don't force the issue until their hand is forced itself by the courts lol like the introduction of refunds for example.

 

[eonden]

Bingo. And for some people it made it extremely easy to use their available networks to push through. For others they had to beg and beg and beg on social media. It was just awful.

From other post
I believe you may be misunderstanding what I'm saying. I am not in any way defending the old greenlight system. It sucked balls and many developers had their careers brought full stop because they didn't get in. Greenlight ruined careers. Thankfully Itch was around for the others.

Click to shrink...

I think it was better than what was before, but the popularity contest was bad. Direct is better in all ways (although it needs some better control of some content). Also, it is hard to ruin careers when they wouldnt have gotten into Steam before (hence, Greenlight expanding the amount of games that could get in). Also, Desura was there too at the time...

Not really, read interview with Gabe from EDGE magazine. It caused them some headaches but they aare fine with competition and they are competing by doing other things because Valve will never start paying developers for exclusivity or similar things.

Steam main advantage are features. And i will point to you how Valve did nothing in past month or so and ended up in news almost every single week. They did that by just having one simple feature, Concurrent Users and Players counter.

Click to shrink...

The headache was mostly related to Epic attacking them. Otherwise it was more about "Kay".

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

I think overall Valve has made the right decisions when it comes to this stuff, and I think the "Indiepocalypse" was always a misunderstanding. Indies were never dying, the wider pool of releases simply redistributed the revenue across a wider pool of developers. The main group hollering about it were those who found big success among smaller competition and couldn't see the forest for the trees when competition got bigger and broader.

Click to shrink...

Yeah I really think there needs to be a clear distinction in what the problems are. Greenlight was always questionable and bad. But opening the floodgates created new problems. Personally, I prefer the way it is now because it actually gives more games a chance. But in terms of discoverability, it's still fucked.