Whew! What a year it was. We saw The best Steam games of 2023 revealed – with some surprising results – countered by the tragic loss of a lot of studios and development teams. Above all, the last 12 months have shown the popularity of gaming is by no means dipping.
According to recent data from SteamDB, 14,533 games were released on the Steam platform in 2023. With the exception of 2018, we can see this number has been on the rise since the early 2000s. According to the graph, October was the busiest month, with 1,324 titles released on the platform.
Given what we can see – and providing the data is indeed accurate – we can expect this figure to rise even further throughout this new year.
Diamonds in the rough
Obviously, over 14,500 video game launches is a lot. But it’s more than likely that many of these would have been obscure indie titles that perhaps didn’t make much of an impact. But that’s okay, the number alone shows that gaming – especially on PC – continues to be on the rise.
Actually, the indie scene did have quite an impact on the industry. The SteamDB chart shows that independent developers released a total of 6,408 games, which accounts for around 44% of all titles released last year. That and we got to see the enormous success of the likes of Lethal Company, which still holds a high position on Steam’s Top Sellers (just behind Baldur’s Gate 3, no less).
In short, 2023 saw a hell of a lot of video games being released on Steam. May it continue into 2024 and beyond.
