How to Market a Game: 2022 became the worst year for indie developers on Steam
It's hard to live an indie life.
As a benchmark, How to Market a Game considered titles that passed 1,000 reviews on the platform.
In 2022 there were 420 such games. A year before - 532. In 2020 - 577. The smallest amount of 1,000+ reviews games were in 2016 & 2017 - 422.
Wherein, the number of new indie games on Steam is increasing every year. If in 2016 there were about 10% of successful indie releases, in 2022 this percentage dropped to 3.75%.
Interesting highlights:
There were no indie titles in 2022 that failed the release but made a comeback with great live-ops and community management.
Vampire Survivor clones were popular even at the end of 2022.
Horror games do have a stable audience and sell quite fine.