Post

Steam market reality check: When we released CE1 in Sept 2016, 462 games launched that month. This March it was 1,817 games. That's 4x more releases while Steam users only doubled. Doesn't sound that bad right? It's about catalog size though.... 1/

When we released in 2016 there were around 5,000 games on Steam. It's now 100,000+. Sure a lot of them are are not serious contenders, but still the amount of competition by back catalog has grown immensly... 2/

According to reports, the amount of playtime going to fresh games (released within the last 12M) is less than 10%. That means that 90% of playtime goes to older games. And those 10% include heavy hitters by major AAA publishers, so that leaves indie games with a fraction of available play time. 3/

It is not uncommon that a lot of studios now make more money from their back catalog than their new game releases and are even doubling down on this strategy. Devolver made 88% of its revenue in 2024 from back catalog sales. These games are not going away. 4/

Older studios like Maschinen-Mensch benefit from this, but it is getting increasingly harder for new mid-sized studios to find their footing, hence the rise of solo devs who can afford taking the risk of releasing highly innovative games. /5

And there is no baseline success for bigger games anymore. Now super hits like Balatro and Stardew Valley are surpassing the commercial reach of games created by 1000+ people teams. /6

Very interesting points and I thought the same recently when looking through the review counts MaschinenMensch games were getting. Doesn't this also mean there's an even greater incentive for publishers to shut down their dev studios for quick gains?

It’s exactly that - doing “okay” isn’t good enough anymore for larger studios. What isn’t a hit is a failure, and that threshold becomes higher the larger the studio is… Which also means larger teams making niche games get penalized, and smaller devs/studios making broadly appealing games rewarded.

If you're not a hit in Steam's algorithm, you're quickly tossed to the side. From removing the once guaranteed 1M views on launch to funneling more and more views to bigger games. It's just becoming harder having a small modest hit. Super hits are prioritized. AA/AAA is struggling too.