The Steam end-of-year review always throws up some interesting numbers, and with 2024's stats now out, it prompts some interesting reflections on how we game, both individually and en masse. On a personal level, it turns out I've played about 50% fewer games on Steam than last year (I blame Game Pass, emulation, and my overpriced but utterly captivating Nintendo 3DS XL), while turn-based, stealth, and detective games made up a big part of my 2024 jam.
But the really interesting stuff is on the macro scale, as it shows that Steam users spent just 15% of their total playing time in games that launched in 2024. 47% of the total playing time on Steam was spent on games released in the last one to seven years, while a sizeable 37% of time was spent in games that have been out for eight years or more.
So what do we make of all this? Are people just not buying new games any more? No, that's probably not the case. In fact, that 15% is a significant increase over the 9% of playtime spent in 2023 on new games released that year (though it's down on the 17% of time folks spent in new games in 2022). So 2024 has actually seen a bit of a bounceback from last year, possibly driven by the popularity of new online games like Helldivers 2, Delta Force, and, uhhh, the free-to-play super-sensation that is Banana. On the singleplayer front, simian action-adventure Black Myth: Wukong has led the charge with some eye-watering concurrent player numbers on Steamcharts.
The current state of live service games may play its part in why the 'time spent in new games' numbers aren't higher. Service games make up the vast majority of Steam's Most Played charts, with long-established titles like Counter-Strike, Dota 2, and PUBG ruling the roost for years. Meanwhile, as Ubisoft can attest with its Skull and Bones struggles and alarmingly abrupt closure of XDefiant, it's becoming increasingly challenging and risky for a new live service game to break through into the market. While there have been some breakouts like Marvel Rivals and Path of Exile 2, for the most part players stick religiously to the ongoing games that they've already invested tons of time and money into.
Another factor is that Steam has over 200,000 titles as of today, dating back decades, which dwarfs the 18,000 or so released in 2024 (as per SteamDB). Playing games on Steam is effectively playing games on PC, which covers everyone from old-timers revisiting their favourite cRPGs from the 90s, to the hundreds of holdouts who maintain that Civilization 4 is the best one. With all that in mind, that 15% of playing time on games released in 2024 sounds about right, even pretty impressive!
