Only 15% of Steam game time was spent on 2024 releases: players prefer older projects or game services

Valve has released the results of the Steam year, which show interesting gaming trends. According to the data, only 15% of the total time spent by players on Steam was spent on games released in 2024. This indicates that most users continue to play older projects despite the appearance of new releases.

Here's What We Know

It is also interesting that 47% of time was spent on games released in the last seven years, and another 37% on projects that were released more than eight years ago. These figures may indicate that players are focusing more on their game library than on purchasing new titles.

However, it is worth noting that this figure is 6% higher than last year, when only 9% of time was spent on new releases.

One of the reasons for this phenomenon is the popularity of service games, which dominate the lists of the most popular Steam projects. Games such as Counter-Strike, Dota 2, and PUBG continue to hold the lead thanks to a large number of players and constant updates.

It's also interesting to note that Steam has over 200,000 games in its library, but in 2024, there were approximately 18,000 new releases on the platform. This means that players have a huge selection of older games that are also much cheaper. Indeed, games from 2015-2018 can be purchased for a couple of dollars at discounted prices, as not everyone can afford to spend $60 on a new game.

Source: PC Gamer