The unofficial Steam analytics platform Steam Spy says that last year the digital storefront once again saw a record-breaking number of new releases, this time with a grand total of 7,672 titles hitting Steam’s store pages during 2017.
This is something devs should keep an eye on, since visibility (or lack thereof) on platforms like Steam has proven to be a pernicious problem — and one that shows no signs of abating.
Steam Spy’s data suggests 2017 saw the release of 2,427 more games than the preceding year, once again setting an all-time record for games released on Steam and continuing the momentum the platform has been steadily building for years.
Coupled with Steam Spy’s earlier estimates for lifetime Steam releases, this means that 2017 was responsible for just over 40 percent of Steam’s lifetime game releases and that the platform has seen nearly 19,000 games released since 2004.
That statistic comes ahead of Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin’s yearly end-of-year Steam analysis, but Galyonkin notes that the current stats work out to an average of 21 games released per day.
This record-breaking year of releases came as Valve kicked off a midyear transition from one self-publishing option to another, announcing and later rolling out a replacement for Steam Greenlight called Steam Direct. The new process switched the submission fee to a recoupable $100 per game submission and introduced a review process that runs individual games through a brief review period. That program began in mid-June.