With the start of 2025 it’s good to look back at the previous year to see what the Steam marketplace looked like. What were people buying? What games were connecting with players? What do fans want more of? Is it overcrowded?
Since 2022, every January I take a snapshot of the data of every game that was released in the previous year using vginsights.com. Then I look for trends in the games that succeeded vs the games that struggled.
Looking at the top selling 10-15 games to make long term forecasts is unpredictable. The sample size is too small and the top games are subject to a cascade of success begets success. So instead of just looking at the top 10 games or something, I look at every single game that earned at least 1000 reviews. (See the Appendix at the bottom for a full explanation of why 1000 reviews is so special).
The top class of games constitutes about the top 2.5% of Steam and gives us a more stable look at what is selling.
And yes, I will talk about survivorship bias below so don’t send me that airplane picture.
So let’s dive in and see what happened in 2024.
How many games were released?
In 2024 there were 18,234 games released on Steam
This is where articles typically write INDIEPOCALYPSE, 18K games released. Everything is over. Look at how much that line goes up!
AI! It is AI!
But if you look a bit deeper it is more subtle.
In this chart I subdivide the curve of total games released by how many reviews they earned.
You can see that a huge majority (over 75%) get fewer than 50 reviews.
From my perspective most of the increase in the number of games on Steam comes from the expanded number of first time, amateur game devs uploading their first attempt at a game. It is very rare to succeed with your first game and it takes consistent work to get good at making and releasing games.
Far fewer developers release a second, or third, or fourth game.
Was this actually a good year for indies?
When I was pulling the 2024 data together, I was surprised! Usually the January data shows about 300-ish games earned 1000 reviews. But this year, I found 445 games that earned 1000 reviews in a single year.
There were a lot more indie games by January than in previous years!
This is good news!
Now, a bit of reality first. Yes the number of “winning” 1000+ review games increased by 25%. BUUUUT the total number of games increased by 31% over the previous year.
To look at it another way look at this chart. The percentage of ALL games succeeding went down by .12%
| Total 1000 | Games Released | Percentage succeed | |
| 2022 | 337 | 12304 | 2.74% |
| 2023 | 354 | 13834 | 2.56% |
| 2024 | 445 | 18,239 | 2.44% |
So the Steam algorithm is barely keeping up with the influx of games.
What caused the 25% increase in 1000+ review games?
I have a number of theories
- Developers are just better at collecting wishlists now. They know the “Steam meta” of applying to festivals, releasing demos and giving them to streamers. More wishlists lead to more conversions which means more games are able to sell more.
- More people know about daily deals. I wrote about Daily Deals here. Valve also released a tool that allows more people to schedule them automatically. By getting a daily deal you sell more copies, get more reviews, and potentially get over the 1000 review mark.
- More egalitarian Daily Deals. Valve added 2 more daily deal slots to the front page. They also limited games to only getting 2 Daily Deals per year. This means the number of games a year that can get one potentially quadrupled. While some devs experienced smaller returns from a Daily Deal than they did in years past, that indicates that more devs got a seat at the table. So the wealth was spread around more.
- Valve has made the Steam Sales more profitable for higher performing games. I have heard that some lucky developers (who were in the 500-1000+ review range) got special, curated featuring on the top of the seasonal sales leading to more earnings. Details are still scarce, but If you experienced this good fortune, please contact me, I want to hear more.
- New Demo Rules – Towards the end of 2024 Valve let developers notify wishlisters when they launched a demo. This leads to more exposure and more wishlists and ultimately more sales.
This is all speculation, but I think Valve is doing some work to try and expand the tools that developers have to get more visibility. These algorithm changes are pushing more mid-tier games to more customers leading to more sales.
Genres
In addition to looking at many games released and “succeeded,” I use my year in review to ask “What type of games are selling.”
During my annual review, I look at every single steam page for every 1000+ reviewed games and give my subjective, but fair, genre assignment. Every game gets one and only one genre. If the game is a mix, I pick the dominant genre of the two (usually the one with the core gameplay loop and the other genre is a bit of flavoring. Again, subjective, but educated guess.)
Then I graph how many of those 1000+ reviewers fit within which genres.
There was nothing surprising about this list. Developers think that genres changes as fast as the winds in Spring. But when I compare the 2024 genre chart to the 2023, and 2024 one, there isn’t much difference.
Here is a combo chart I built that overlays the last 3 years charts.
If that is too hard to read, I also created a list of the top genres in the class of 1000+ review games for the past 3 years. Number of games in that genre in parenthesis.
| Rank | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 |
| #1 | Horror (47 games) | Horror (28 games) | Horror (29) |
| #2 | Narrative (30) | Open World Survival Craft (23) | Shooter (23) |
| #3 | Simulation (27) | Simulation (21) | Sexual content (20) |
| #4 | Shooter (27) | Narrative (20) | RPG (19) |
| #5 | Open World Survival Craft (23) | Multiplayer Shooter (New) (20) | Simulation (17) |
| #6 | Sexual content (20) | Vampire-Survivor-likes (New) (17) | Narrative (17) |
| #7 | Idle / Incremental (NEW) (20) | Shooter (16) | Roguelike (14) |
| #8 | Management (19) | City Builder (16) | Strategy (New) (14) |
| #9 | RPG (17) | RPG (15) | City Builder (12) |
| #10 | Roguelike (16) | Sexual content (14) | Action-Adventure (New) (12) |
Whenever I publish genre rankings, a common dismissive comment I see goes something like this: “I don’t want to chase trends!”
Well, you don’t have to chase anything, the genres aren’t moving. They are quite stable. They aren’t really trends either, they are almost standards at this point.
In general, I don’t think genres go in and out of style very rapidly. The games that were popular 20 years ago are mostly popular now. For instance, the Simulation genre had 27 games reach the top of the charts this year. Simulation has been in the top #10 for the past 3 years. 25-ish years ago the Sims, Microsoft Flight Sim, and business sims like Rollercoaster Tycoon were huge on PC. As I outlined in my blog late last year, Crafty-buildy style games are a perennial favorite for PC gamers.
It is true that there are micro trends that flare up then fade away. Vampire-Survivor-likes flared up (As I mentioned here) but is fading now. This year Supermarket Sims arrived on the scene (not sure when they will die). But, the broader genres of roguelikes, and simulation games are quite stable.
For instance, horror is HUGE! For the past 3 years it is the #1 genre in the top 3% of sellers. Steam is basically a grindhouse horror cinema with a couple other genres thrown in to keep things fresh. Read my blog about why every indie should make 1 horror game. Sure there are trends within Horror. This year saw a bunch of Backrooms spinoffs. Who knows what will be the Horror sub trend next year. But overall, horror games are consistently at the top.
VR games still underperform and they don’t seem to be improving. Puzzle and Platformers are always near the bottom. Match 3 is consistently the absolute worst genre you can make. The market is remarkably stable.
But what about Celeste? Aka Survivorship bias
Repeat after me… “We can’t just look at the winners, that is SURVIVORSHIP BIAS!” I can hear the commenters already “Maybe the reason there are so many successful Horror games is because there are SOOOOO many horror games released every year.”
I am contractually obligated by the law of bloggers to show this image:
This is true though. We must look at the failures and the successes. So let’s look at how MANY of each of these genres are released every year to guard against the survivorship bomber.
In the following charts I filtered for ALL games (not just indie and AA) that were released in 2024 and had each of the following tags. This will show us how many of these games FAILED (aka didn’t survive).
| Genre | Num games with 1000 Reviews | Total released in this genre in 2024 | Percentage reaching 1000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open World Survival Craft | 23 | 94 | 24.47% |
| Farming | 10 | 48 | 20.83% |
| Roguelike Deckbuilder | 11 | 164 | 6.71% |
| Management | 19 | 350 | 5.43% |
| Simulation | 27 | 718 | 3.76% |
| 4X | 3 | 85 | 3.53% |
| Idle | 20 | 656 | 3.05% |
| City Builder | 10 | 370 | 2.70% |
| Metroidvania | 6 | 271 | 2.21% |
| Horror | 47 | 2,599 | 1.81% |
| Automation | 5 | 319 | 1.57% |
| RPG | 17 | 1,161 | 1.46% |
| Tower Defense | 8 | 557 | 1.44% |
| Racing | 9 | 670 | 1.34% |
| Sexual Content | 20 | 1,592 | 1.26% |
| Souls-like | 3 | 363 | 0.83% |
| RTS | 4 | 488 | 0.82% |
| 3D Platformer | 10 | 1394 | 0.72% |
| Colony Sim | 1 | 158 | 0.63% |
| VR | 2 | 467 | 0.43% |
| Hidden object | 5 | 1290 | 0.39% |
| Puzzle | 14 | 3902 | 0.36% |
| 2D Platformer | 5 | 2019 | 0.25% |
| Point And Click Adventure | 2 | 1499 | 0.13% |
But those are mostly dirty hobbyists!
One of the common arguments for why 2D Platformers have such a low percentage of successful games goes something like this: “the platformer genre is typically selected by ‘hobbyists’ when they are working on their “first game.” and they pollute the pool making the percentages look very low. But if you toss out the number of hobbyists, 2D Platformers actually do quite well.’
Well, let’s filter out all games that have fewer than 700 followers. Typically for every 1 follower, a game earns about 10 wishlists. Therefore these games have at least 7000 wishlists (which is hard to do), requires sophisticated outreach, community building, and marketing. Using this metric isn’t a perfect, but only counting games with 700+ followers is a way that we can maybe filter out “hobbyists” who just upload their game without any intention of marketing it or earning a professional income from it.
The following chart is the ranking of a genre’s percentage of success if we “filter out hobbyists.”
And….
The list looks mostly the same…
| Games with 1000 Reviews | Total Released in 2024 that have 700+ followers | Percentage reaching 1000+ reviews | |
| Farming | 10 | 19 | 52.63% |
| Open World Survival Craft | 23 | 57 | 40.35% |
| Idle | 20 | 87 | 22.99% |
| Multiplayer Shooter | 12 | 69 | 17.39% |
| Roguelike Deckbuilder | 11 | 66 | 16.67% |
| Management | 19 | 139 | 13.67% |
| Racing | 9 | 70 | 12.86% |
| Horror | 47 | 383 | 12.27% |
| Tower Defense | 8 | 70 | 11.43% |
| 4X | 3 | 27 | 11.11% |
| Shooter | 27 | 272 | 9.93% |
| Simulation | 27 | 278 | 9.71% |
| 3D Platformer | 10 | 111 | 9.01% |
| City Builder | 10 | 118 | 8.47% |
| Metroidvania | 6 | 85 | 7.06% |
| Narrative | 30 | 511 | 5.87% |
| Automation | 5 | 90 | 5.56% |
| Roguelike | 16 | 333 | 4.80% |
| RPG | 17 | 409 | 4.16% |
| Puzzle | 14 | 382 | 3.66% |
| RTS | 4 | 114 | 3.51% |
| Sexual Content | 20 | 604 | 3.31% |
| Souls-like | 3 | 92 | 3.26% |
| VR | 2 | 66 | 3.03% |
| 2D Platformer | 5 | 196 | 2.55% |
| Colony Sim | 1 | 65 | 1.54% |
| Point & Click Adventure | 2 | 179 | 1.12% |
Adult
If on any given day you look at the “New & Trending” charts you are almost guaranteed to see at least one not safe for work title. Usually surprising, it sticks with you. There is a fear that Steam is becoming a porn site and the only thing that succeeds anymore are “bad taste” titillating titles.
But as a percentage of total games released, games tagged as “Sexual Content” are at an all time low.
There were 1,640 games tagged as “Sexual Content” in 2024.
There is just going to be porn on Steam. It isn’t getting worse, it isn’t getting better.
Summary
There is a lot more nuance and details to pull out of my deep dive into the top games of 2024. I will be hosting my annual 2024 year in review live show. Get a ticket by buying my discounted Game Marketing Ideas course ($65)
Here though is the high level summary of 2024:
- Yes there are more games than ever
- 75% of the new games are likely hobbyist’s first games
- Valve is expanding the space to promote more games
- The real question is if they are keeping pace with the influx
- The games with the best chances at success are crafty buildy.
APPENDIX: Why do I care about 1000 reviews?
In my experience, games that have earned around 1000 reviews are typically the ones that get offered Daily Deals, “More LIke This”, Discovery Queue and other promotions from Valve. They are in what I like to call “Real Steam.”
NOTE: 1000 reviews is correlation not causation. THERE IS NO MAGIC ALGORITHM THRESHOLD AT 1000 REVIEWS. Do not ask me how to game the system to get people to review the game more to get you over that threshold. You cannot buy 1000 reviews to trick the algorithm. 1000 is just a somewhat arbitrary benchmark I picked because it is a nice round number, and it is really hard to achieve, and typically (but not always) games that have 1000 reviews, have earned enough money to be in the good graces of Valve. It is also really hard to get 1000 reviews.
I find that even well marketed, well funded games, with support from big publishers can stall out at 150-300 reviews if they don’t tickle the fancy of the market. To get 1000 Reviews indicates that the Steam algorithm saw something positive about the game and said “sit back, we will take it from here” and started marketing your game for you.
What games are included here
- Game was EA released or traditionally released in 2024. (If the game EA launched in 2021 but 1.0ed in 2024, it would appear in a 2021 roundup)
- The game is Indie or AA as defined by VGInsights here.
- I did a second pass to remove games that I don’t consider indie if they were published by Tencent (sorry Wukong is not in my list of 1000 reviewed games)
- I removed games that were based on famous IP like Warhammer, or Marvel, or Ninja Turtles because their success is likely more attributable to their IP and not necessarily the game genre and design. I do this project to find gameplay that really appeals to people despite the IP.
- I removed games that were not translated into English. That’s not because I am offended by the exclusion of my mother-tongue but because those games seemed to be aimed at a culture that I don’t have experience with and any inference I could make from those games would not be applicable to the wider indie game market. An example would be Chinese-language FMV dating games (like this one 美女，请别影响我学习 which translates to “Beauty, please don’t affect my study”.) These games seem to only do well in China. I don’t think if you made one for the English market they would do well (but you can try).
- I included Free games because it is still hard to get to 1000 even if your game is free. In 2024 4,857 free games were released but only 3% of them hit 1000 reviews.
- I sampled the data on January 3rd, 2025. This was after the Steam Winter Sale ended and I made sure that VGinsights had run the updated numbers.
- Note that when you look up a game on Steam, the review counts are localized to the language your account is set to. If the review is in a different language than yours, it is not shown on the Steam page. The only way to see the true total count of reviews is to use a data scraping tool like SteamDB or VGinsights, or Gamealytic.
- This year some developers realized you could release a game for free, earn hundreds of reviews, then switch to a paid game to make themselves look like best sellers. Valve caught on to this and removed the free reviews but many of these tracking sites continue to count the full review count. I have manually removed games where this happened but I may have missed some.
- Some games have been pulled by the developer for one reason or another. I removed those games from my data.
- Yes I am aware that a game that releases on December 30th will not be included in my count of 1000 reviews because it didn’t have enough time. But would you rather me give you this vital product information in 330 days or would you like it now? Lets take the chance and do it now.