Good Year for Steam; Several Records and Over 14,000 New Games

The end of the year is a period of great summaries. The passing months are reviewed by the game industry, including the digital distribution platform Steam. How did 2023 look from the point of view of the popular service? It turns out that remarkably good. This is evidenced by some impressive numbers cited by journalists of Game World Obsever, based on data from SteamDB.

1. In the past year Valve's platform saw releases od a total of 14,423 new games. This is an increase of as much as 14.5% over 2022, which brought 12,567 launches.
2. As of 2019, the number of titles debuting on Steam is growing by more than 10% year-on-year.
3. How many games were released on Steam in each month? The leader in this regard was October with 1,320 releases. Second place went to August (1,285) and third to March (1,270).
4. 2023 was a record year for the platform in terms of the number of active users. The report shows that on March 26, as many as 33,598,520 people were using Steam at the same time..
5. In December, the platform set a new activity record in games. The current figure stands at 10,389,646 players.
6. The king of peak activity in 2023 turned out to be Hogwarts Legacy, with 879,308 concurrent players. On the second step of the podium was Baldur's Gate 3 with 875,343 people. Third place belongs to Sons of the Forest (414,257 players), and fourth place to Starfield (330,723 active players).
7. It is worth mentioning that only 12 of the 12,958 games on Steam's hit list from 2023 managed to attract more than 100,000 simultaneous players.
8. At the time of writing this news, the best-rated title is the free-to-play pixel-art roguelike HoloCure. The game inspired by such titles as Vampire Survivors boasts more than 97% positive ratings (based on 26,840 user reviews).
9. And when it comes to paid games, the leader of the list is the cooperative survival horror Lethal Company with 96.99% positive comments (based on more than 214,000 reviews). The second place was taken by the platformer Pizza Tower - 96.75% (based on 49,370 reviews). Third place with 96.43% of positive reviews (based on 118,378 comments) went to Residen Evil 4. Just behind the podium was Dave the Diver with a score of 95.98% (based on 82,447 comments).
10. On the opposite side of the barricade was Overwatch 2, which became the lowest rated item of 2023. Blizzard's game received only 16.19% positive reviews (based on 229,543 reviews). The crushing reviews were mainly posted by players as "revenge" on the developers for abandoning the promised PvE mode and an aggressive policy focused on making money.
11. Among paid games with more than 100 reviews, the worst rated is the high-profile The Day Before. The title, which debuted in deplorable condition and contributed to the closure of Fntastic, received 17.6% positive comments (based on 23,812 reviews).

• Steam
• stats (games)
• digital distribution
• PC market
• summary of the year 2023