VG Insights: Cooperative Games on Steam in 2024
It's not only fun but also quite lucrative.
Co-op titles are games with predominantly PvE mechanics.
The number of cooperative games released surged in 2020 (from 388 in 2019 to 647). It seems developers recognized the importance of socialization during the pandemic. Since then, the number of cooperative games released each year has only increased. In 2023, 799 such projects were released.
In 2023, cooperative games accounted for 6% of the total number of games released on Steam. At the same time, they made up 36% of all units sold.
In 2024, the situation looks even more disproportionate. Cooperative games make up 5% of all released games; they account for 46% of all copies sold. Of course, this is significantly influenced by titles like Helldivers II, Palworld, and Content Warning. Nevertheless, the share of sales for cooperative games has not dropped below 33% over the past five years.
❗️The consumption pattern has a major influence here. Cooperative games are often played with friends, hence the high virality factor.
According to VGI, the largest cooperative games in 2024 are: Palworld (19 million copies; peak CCU - 2.1M); Helldivers II (11 million units; peak CCU - 459k); Content Warning (2.5 million copies; peak CCU - 204k); Gray Zone Warfare (1.4 million copies; peak CCU - 73k).
❗️In my opinion, Gray Zone Warfare doesn't quite fit this list. It’s more of an Extraction Shooter, although it does have cooperative missions.
In 2024, more than 40 million copies of co-op games were sold. Palworld accounts for 47% of this volume; Helldivers II for 28%. The other projects make up 16%.
Cooperative games on Steam outperform single-player games in terms of sales. A typical cooperative game sells around 40,000 copies compared to 5,000 for a single-player game.
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When considering the worst 25% of representatives, cooperative games sell 121% better. When comparing the top 25% in terms of copies sold, cooperative games sell 1313% better. Taking the median, cooperative games sell 627% better.
VGI notes that 106 cooperative games on Steam have sold more than 5 million copies.
Key features of cooperative games: they are viral; generate memes and absurd situations; are fun to stream; and most of them have high replayability.