Checking Out Steam Releases in February 2017

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Last month, I decided to try my hand at keeping track of Steam releases in 2017. It just seemed like the right time, as 2016 was a landmark year of releases for the service. This year is also poised to be quite different once Valve shutters Steam Greenlight.

Defined as a failure practically out of the gate by Valve, Greenlight stuck around for years regardless. At the beginning, getting Greenlit meant something. At this point almost anything gets Greenlit given enough time. Once its gone, we should see an eventual decline in the number releases. I don’t know if we’ll notice that this year, though, as thousands of Greenlit games still haven’t launched on Steam. In any case, let’s get on with the data.

February Bar Chart

518 games launched on Steam in February. Despite being the shortest month of the year, it has already outpaced January’s releases with 51 more games. So far, this tracks with Steam Spy’s data from 2016 in the sense that game releases continue to climb all the way through April (before dropping off in May).

My count of 518 does not take into consideration games which first released into Early Access in 2016 and are now seeing full release. I simply wasn’t tracking data at that point. However, any games which hit Early Access and launched fully within the first months of 2017 are only counted once.

Februrary 2017 Steam Releases

Aside from the final week of the month, each week saw over 100 releases easily with 209, 130, 132, and 25 games. The reason for the tiny amount of games in the last week is simple. It was only a three day “week” from February 26 to 28. The costs of these titles (their full price – not launch week discounts) were $1,661.15, $1,159.52, $1,165.79, and $159.79 respectively. Purchasing every game released on Steam in February would set you back $4,146.24. That’s $583.97 more expensive than January. The average cost per game (including 51 free to play titles) sat at $8.43 for February.

88 games came with VR support or required it specifically for the month. That’s 20% higher than January’s amount. 60 Early Access titles released without VR support, which is impressive when it seems like every VR game is in some stage of Early Access. Actually, only 27% VR releases this month were of the Early Access variety which is a decline from January!

February Pie Chart

Here’s a look at how game releases compare between 2016 and 2017. It’s not a perfect metric because Steam Spy’s methods are not quite the same as mine. As such, I would probably have tracked more releases than them for 2016. In any case, Steam Spy reports 272 February 2016 titles which is just under half the amount released this year. Weirdly enough, the percentage breakdown is exactly the same as January’s. If this trend continues, we’re not only going to see another landmark year for Steam but one that doubles the already ridiculous performance of 2016.

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