How to Market a Game: Results of the H1'24 and Q2'24 in Steam for Indie Games
More games on the platform, and the competition has never been harder. However, there are some evergreen genres on Steam, that you might be interested in.
Chris Zukowski (blog author) highlights games with at least 1000 reviews on Steam. AAA projects and games based on major IPs have been removed from the sample. Niche projects for different markets (like Chushpan Simulator) have also been excluded.
In the first half of 2024, 8362 games were released on Steam. This is 27% more than the same period in 2023.
❗️ Over the past 5 years, the number of new games on Steam has only grown.
In the first quarter of 2024, 72 games reached the milestone of 1000 reviews. In the second quarter, another 160 games were added to them (119, excluding AAA and major IP projects).
For the past 8 years, the number of games on Steam with more than 1000 reviews has remained roughly the same - about 500 games per year. This is bad news because competition increases as the number of released games grows.
Chris also counted the number of “sleeper hits” - projects that did not receive 1000 reviews in the quarter of their release but did so in the following quarter. There were 28 such games in Q2 2024. Most of them were close to this mark in the release quarter.
❗️ The overall conclusion is that if your game sells poorly at the start, it is highly likely to continue selling poorly.
The popularity of Action Roguelikes inspired by Vampire Survivors has declined. In 2022, 10 projects reached the 1000+ review mark. In 2023, there were 17. But in 2024, there was only 1, Deep Rock Galactic Survivors.
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Horror games continue to be popular. Also successful are games where you need to build something; simulate something; or craft something.
10% of all projects on Steam that reach 1000+ reviews are for adult audiences. This was the case in 2022, 2023, and seems to be the case in 2024.
Only 1 VR game in the past couple of quarters has exceeded 1000 reviews - UNDERDOGS.