In a nutshell: Do you ever feel that there may be too many games released these days? It could be because 2024 saw more new titles launched on Steam than any year before, a total of almost 19,000, up 32.5% compared to last year.
The ever-helpful SteamDB stat tracker reveals that as we enter the final few hours of 2024, a massive 18,965 games (at the time of writing) have been released on Steam during these last 12 months.
The figure is quite remarkable when you look at Steam’s previous yearly totals. 2024 saw the highest number of new games ever released on Valve’s platform, with 4,655 more games appearing this year compared to 2023 (14,310), marking the largest-ever yearly increase.
Just four years ago, in 2020, there were 9,686 new games released on Steam, around half the number of new releases in 2024. Go all the way back to 2006, three years after Steam first arrived, and just 70 games were launched on the service.
While there were more games than ever before released this year, only 3,973, or just over 20%, were popular enough for Valve to enable community profile features, including trading cards, badges, emoticons, etc. It’s these games that count toward a user’s Game Collector and Achievement Collector totals, too.
Last year, 3,874 new games were enrolled in Steam community profile features, while the figure was 3,491 in 2021, indicating a steady yearly increase. Nevertheless, the fact that 14,992 new releases in 2024 weren’t popular enough to receive these features illustrates how many games go unnoticed.
Also read: Best PC Games (You Should Be Playing)
SteamDB also includes a list of the top-rated games of 2024, based on user ratings. Unsurprisingly, the crack-like addictiveness of Balatro helped it secure second place with a score of 96.75%, beaten only by MiSide’s rating of 96.78%.
Other top-rated games include Black Myth: Wukong (95.91%) in seventh, Tactical Breach Wizards (95.12%) in sixteenth, and Silent Hill (93.72%) in the 66th spot. All these titles appear in our Best PC Games (You Should Be Playing) feature.
Earlier this month, Valve released its Best of the Year lists, highlighting the top-selling and most-played games of 2024.
