Steam made $4.3b in game sales in 2017, 50% from top 100 games

Steam saw an increase in game sales revenue in 2017, generating an extra $800m (£565,752m) according to the man behind SteamSpy, Sergey Galyonkin.

Galyonkin’s figures, which as he and I are often at pains to point out are estimates, suggest that sales revenue hit $4.3b (£3b and change) in 2017, a substantial step up from the 2016 figure of $3.5b (£2.48b) for Valve. 

Speaking at GDC, with a blog post to follow at some point in the near future, Galyonkin suggested that around half of 2017’s figure was generated by only 100 of the 21,000 games that are currently available on Steam’s marketplace.

That means that 0.5% of the games available on Steam, generated 50% of that $4.3b figure.

This paints a bleak picture for discoverability on the platform, but a great picture for games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which scored $600m from over 28m owners. PUBG was the biggest earner by a long way, with the second place game Valve’s own Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with $120m, while Grand Theft Auto V takes third with $83m. Again, all educated guesses rather than cast-iron facts.

This data doesn’t include microtransactions, DLC or in-app purchases. This means free-to-play games aren’t included, but also games with additional ways to spend money aren’t necessarily showing the true extent of their financial success, either.