GameDiscoverCo: In which countries do owners of successful games on Steam live
The US, China, and Russia are the top countries on Steam by the users in top titles.
Successful games are considered projects with more than 100 thousand players.
20.79% of players in "hit" projects are from the USA, 8.41% from China, and 5.66% from Russia. This is the median figure over time
However, if we only consider launches from 2024, we can see that the share of the USA has grown (to 21.53%); China has grown significantly (to 11.45%), and Germany has risen to third place (5.42%). Russia shows a significant decline (to 3.88%); the share of the UK decreases (by 0.69%) and Canada (by 0.31%).
❗️GameDiscoverCo notes that the figures for China may be underestimated due to market specifics.
However, if we are talking about F2P games, the situation changes dramatically. The median percentage of players in the USA for F2P projects is 14.9%; for Russia - 7.17%; for China - 5.78%; for Brazil - 5.16%. Overall, the share of players in free-to-play games is higher in developing countries.
You can have a deep dive using this spreadsheet, carefully prepared by the author (thanks, Simon!).