Steam players spent 15% of their time on new titles - and that's success of 2024 games
15% of the time spent on new games by Steam users might not seem like much, but it paradoxically highlights how popular the titles released in 2024 have been.
Only 15% of the gaming time by Steam users was dedicated to this year's releases.
Dominance of "classics" and "latest" games
Steam Replay 2024 is primarily a wealth of personal information about how individual players spent their time in games on Valve's platform. However, the annual summary also includes information about the activity of the entire Steam user base, including the median number of games played, achievements earned, and the longest streaks spent gaming.
Steam also highlights one category: time spent on titles released in a given year. The user's chart also shows a series of "latest favorites" (i.e. titles released 1-7 years ago) and "classic games." In the first group, players spent about 47% of their total gameplay time on Steam, while in older titles, they spent about 37%.
15% = success?
In fact, the approximately 15% attributed to new games this year is still an improvement over last year. In 2022, Steam users spent 17% of their gaming time on new titles, but already in 2023... it was only 9% of the total result. 2 years ago, the "classic" dominated (64% of the game time), and a year ago: "latest favorites" (52%).
There is no talk of a downward trend, and there is a simple explanation for this: there are, in short, more old games, and many of them have a loyal fan base. This is partly due to the dynamic development of the games-as-a-service category in recent years.
The number of launches on Steam is increasing every year, and 2024 is no exception, it brought successes like Palworld and Black Myth: Wukong, as well as many "smaller" (read: still huge) hits, such as Marvel Rivals, Path of Exile 2, Helldivers 2, and the Early Access release of Manor Lords (and, um, a Banana game; yes, it's still one of the more popular titles on Steam).
Nonetheless, there are currently over 200,000 games available on Steam. Many of them are small titles that few have heard of, but over the years the number of "eternally alive" games has significantly increased.
After all, you just need to take a look at the most popular titles on Valve's platform at any time. From time to time, one or another new pal, monkey, or banana will be found at the top. However, most of the time, Counter-Strike, PUBG, Dota 2, GTA 5, and many old games-services dominate the ranking (sometimes with the addition of single-player hits like Stardew Valley).
It should also be mentioned that Valve, of course, doesn't separate the time spent in DLCs. One of the big hits of 2024 was the expansion to Elden Ring, which at its peak attracted over 780,000 players to the game.
In this context, it may be rather surprising that gamers, despite everything, spent more time on new titles than last year. Well, we could even venture to say that this shows the strength of this year's games.
