SteamSpy Spills Saucy Secrets Surrounding Steam

GDC is happening right now, which means the biggest and brightest minds in the games industry are converging to share ideas and host panels. One such panel was held the other day, and it was lead by a data website called SteamSpy, a place that does pretty much what it says on the tin. And in their talk, they went over a lot of stats regarding the PC’s #1 digital marketplace… which actually painted a fairly grim picture of the platform.

For example, one stat we’ve learned is that Steam, despite being a huge marketplace, isn’t really a viable place for most games. Despite having 7,696 games launched on Steam this year alone, making the Steam library over 21,000 games large, the top 100 games (or 0.5 percent of all games on Steam) make up 50 percent of the total revenue earned on the platform this year alone. These “top 100 games” include such titles as Total War: Warhammer 2, Rocket League, Dark Souls 3, and, of course, PUBG; however, that list also indies like Cuphead.

It’s not entirely accurate – the numbers don’t include DLC or refunds or anything like that, but it’s still quite telling.

Speaking of PUBG (which was #1 on the 100 list), you might be wondering how it’s managing to stay afloat in spite of the fact that Fortnite seems to be crushing it in every metric. Well, as it turns out, there’s a reason BlueHole has been hesitant to make Chinese-only servers - without the Chinese, the game would feel a lot emptier for everyone. Around 78 percent of all Chinese Steam users own PUBG, and they spend an average of 16 hours on it every week.

So there’s a better than good chance that the Chinese are feeding themselves these days almost exclusively with chicken dinners.

2018 is probably going to be an even more interesting year for Steam. So if they host this panel again in 2019, I look forward to some really crazy statistics.