Only 15% of Steam users have played games released in 2024, but why?

techradar.com:

Steam’s end-of-the-year review has always revealed some fascinating PC gaming trends and this year’s is no exception. According to 2024’s stats, only 15% of Steam users spent their total playing time on games that launched in 2024.

Looking further at the data that PC Gamer reports on, 47% of the total playing time on Steam was spent on games released in the last seven years, while 37% of that time was spent on games that launched eight years or more ago. Now the question is, why and what does this mean?

One possible explanation is that gamers could be focusing more on their backlogs rather than new releases. We do know that playtime for current releases is higher this year than in 2023, as there was an increase from 9% to 15%, which means players are buying new titles at least. There are other possibilities for this trend as well.

One reason could be that older games are easier to access due to their cheaper prices, especially due to the many Steam sales. There’s also the influence of the Steam Deck and what’s considered ‘Steam Deck playable,’ since many recent AAA games may be too demanding for a portable PC.

There’s also the fact that older live service games like Counter-Strike, Dota 2, and PUBG have made up Steam's Most Played charts, while newer titles have an incredibly difficult time breaking through and building a player base.

Another reason is that Steam has over 200,000 titles released over the course of decades, compared to the relatively paltry 18,000 games released in 2024 according to SteamDB. So naturally, more users will spend more time playing older games versus recent ones.

Regardless, 15% of playtime dedicated to new games is rather impressive, compared to 2022’s 17% stat. It means that the numbers are recovering after the massive dip in 2023. Hopefully next year we’ll see another increase, as gamers delve into more new titles.

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