Steam in 2024
Valve is showing impressive results.
Cassidy Gerber, a member of Steam's business team, shared the platform updates at Nordic’24.
Steam is growing in revenue. Over the past 5 years, the platform's revenue has more than doubled, increasing by over 2.5 times.
❗️Simon Carless in his newsletter GameDiscoverCo estimated that Steam earned $1.075 billion in May 2024, which is 14% more than in May 2023.
Daily revenue from seasonal sales on Steam is growing. The Spring Sale in 2023 increased by 22% year-over-year (YoY); the Summer Sale by 23%; the Autumn Sale by 17%; and the Winter Sale by 13%. All sales, except for the Spring Sale, set absolute revenue records in 2023.
The peak number of concurrent users on Steam reached 36.3 million.
The peak number of concurrent players exceeded 10 million.
The user base of Steam has grown the most (by more than 150%) in the last 5 years in Japan, India, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile, Israel, and Pakistan.
Significant growth (over 100%) in the last 5 years was seen in China, Serbia, Spain, the Philippines, Vietnam, Peru, and the USA.
❗️ The USA is marked with an asterisk, and Cassidy did not explain why during the lecture.
Key growing regions are Asia (including Southeast Asia), Central, and South America.
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Steam shared the distribution of languages on the platform. The most popular language is English (35.08%); the second is Chinese (28.08%); and the third is Russian (7.91%). The platform currently supports 29 languages.
65% of Steam's audience indicated a primary language other than English. This underscores the importance of localization.