Which Steam games 'won' revenue again in 2023?

Publikováno: 29.1.2024

Also: Deep Rock Galactic's 2023 stats & all kinds of discovery news.

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[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

We have returned, like the prodigal sonny Jim, for another week of data, surprises, and analysis of the PC and console (and fine, some VR and mobile) video game space. Most of you know what we do by now - thanks for reading about it here.

Before we start, ‘game lifecycle speedrun of the week’ award goes to iOS/Android rhythm action game Love Live! School Idol Festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE!, which simultaneously announced the game’s upcoming global launch (in Feb.) and shutdown (in May). That’s an any% record, folks…

[Help us out: yes, you can support GameDiscoverCo by subscribing to GDCo Plus now. You get full access to a super-detailed Steam data cache for unreleased & released games, weekly PC/console sales research, Discord access, seven detailed game discovery eBooks & lots more.]

Which Steam games 'won' revenue in 2023?

A few weeks ago, Steam put up its regular ‘Best of 2023’ sale, which is interesting because it ranks ‘this year’s top games by gross revenue’ on Valve’s giant PC games platform - not precisely, mind you, but in randomly sorted ‘medal tiers’.

Therefore, we can tell which 12 titles hit ‘Platinum’ in 2023, which 12 were ‘Gold’, which 25 were ‘Silver’, and which 50 were ‘Bronze’. It’s a great way to get a basic idea of popularity for last year - both of modern and evergreen titles.

Even better, Steam’s run the charts since at least 2019, and GameDiscoverCo has put together a spreadsheet (Google Drive doc) showing the previous tier rankings for every game that charted on Steam’s top-grossing 99 in 2023. For example, here’s Platinum:

You can already see how interesting this is in terms of understanding how games are performing. (For example, look at Cyberpunk 2077 drifting down the tiers until its Phantom Liberty DLC and the 2.0 update for the base game blasted it back up!)

We could noodle into the details forever, but here’s some top-line notes for you:

  • 35% of the Platinum, Gold & Silver tiers were ‘new in 2023’ games: not sure what you were expecting, but here’s those titles by release date: “2023 - 17; 2022 - 6; 2021 - 3; 2020 - 4; 2019 - 2; 2018 - 1; 2017 - 2; 2016 - 3; 2015 - 2; 2014 - 3; 2013 - 4; 2012 - 1; 2007 - 1.” (Overall: plenty of legacy GaaS titles doing well!)

  • 8 of the top 24 games were F2P & another 10+ paid but discount & IAP-heavy: it’s probably easier to list the premium titles which were largely ‘buy once and done’: Hogwart’s Legacy, Sons Of The Forest, Starfield, and Baldur’s Gate 3 in Platinum, and Resident Evil 4, Armored Core VI & Elden Ring in Gold.

  • The $ floor to make these charts? At least $20 million gross in 2023: no specifics were given, but we’re guesstimating you need $20-30 million to make Bronze, $30-60m to make Silver, $60-90m to reach Gold, and $100 million to reach Platinum. (And you benefit from a lower 20% Steam cut if >$50 million lifetime, btw.)

How about smaller-team games in these charts? There’s not much ‘indie’ in Platinum or Gold - except maybe Sons Of The Forest dev Endnight Games, which could be <20 people if LinkedIn is to be believed, and grossed >$170 million+ LTD (!) on its tense survival sequel.

Further down in Silver, you’ll see other smaller/tiny teams like Lethal Company (at $10, compared to many $60 games in its tier!), BattleBit Remastered, and the small-mid sized Project Zomboid, which has had two ‘Silver’ showings in a row after adding multiplayer back in 2022, as we covered in depth.

Finally, we think it’s fascinating to look at evergreens. For example, Paradox’s space strategy game Stellaris has been in the Silver tier every year since 2019. That’s consistency for you. (As has Korean MMO Black Desert, actually, and good ol’ Team Fortress 2.)

So there you go - this data isn’t very secret. But by perusing multi-year trends for it, you can get a clear sense of real revenue driven, at least in the Steam part of the PC ecosystem. (And outside of Steam on PC, we covered the F2P ‘big boys’ here.)

Deep Rock Galactic: its 2023 stats, transparently

Some slight tailing-off of DAU later in 2023 for Deep Rock - but nothing too bad!

Some of you may remember that we covered co-op FPS ‘space dwarves’ mining game Deep Rock Galactic’s transparent look at its LTD stats up to the end of 2022, back in January 2023.

Well, good news - the dwarves are back in town with an updated infographic, covering the 2023 milestones for the GaaS title, and we’re here to analyze it. The above detailed DAU chart is a great hint as to its ‘sleeper hit’ status, but here’s what else we noticed:

  • Copies sold increased again in 2023, partly powered by discounts: the game really settled into a ‘66% off’ groove on Steam in 2023, with 10+ discounts hitting & strong demand. Thus: 2.57 million units got sold, vs. 2.34m in 2022, 1.39m in 2021, 1.18m in 2020, and ‘just’ 400-500k in 2018 and 2019. It’s evergreen!

  • Cosmetic DLC is piling up, including a well-supported (!) Supporter Pack II: all of the game’s DLC is cosmetic, but there’s now a lot of it, with $130 (at full price!) worth, including a Supporter Pack II that had 33,500 sales within the first 24 hours. Players are super appreciative, with one saying: “I purchased this skin only because Ghost Ship Games deserve it for making a great game and improving it over years with free battlepasses with no FOMO.”

  • The Deep Rock Galactic franchise plan? Goodwill gets converted to spinoffs: we know excess monetization can really put people off. But where’s the financial upside of being so generous, your CFO might ask? Here: topdown autobattler Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and first-person roguelite Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core are both in the Top 100 unreleased Steam games by wishlists.

Other than that, some micro-points to finish off the ol’ analysis:

  • Steam average playtime is still going up, thanks to good retention: average playtime was 42 hours and 45 minutes in 2022, and is 46 hours now, and Steam players with >100 hours played went up from 500,000 to 800,000 in the last year.

  • GameDiscoverCo believes the majority of DRG’s DAU is from Steam: we think that the Xbox ecosystem sees 2x the DAU of PlayStation, but overall, console DAU is about 10-20% of the Steam numbers. (Still good stats, but PC-first.)

  • Dwarves like drinking beer, so let’s see the data: apparently 22% of players passed out drunk (in the game) in 2023, and those that did faceplanted 3.38 times on average. And 151 million virtual pints of ale were quaffed during 2023. Hic.

We like analyzing Deep Rock Galactic because a) the creators (Ghost Ship Games) are transparent, b) they’ve done a good job of growing and retaining interest over time c) they’re doubtless profitable just on sales of the existing game/DLC.

Their growth and retention is often driven by discounts. But Deep Rock is still $10 USD even at 66% off. And its other deluxe bundles are anywhere between $17 and $39 - that’s smart upsell at work. So why pile on ‘pay to win’ extras and get review bombed, if you’re making money, players are happy and you have a 97% Positive Steam rating?

The game discovery news round-up…

Those of you who are Plus subscribers know that in Friday’s Plus newsletter, we spotlighted Sega’s Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth as the #3 debut of last week on Steam (behind Tekken 8 and big survival hit Enshrouded, which just hit 160k CCU!)

Well, GameDiscoverCo’s Alejandro made the above graph at the weekend comparing all the Yakuza/Like A Dragon franchise CCU, as the Japanese gangster adventure swelled to a franchise record 46,000+ CCU on Steam alone - for a $70 game, too.

Anyhow, there’s a whole bunch of platform news to go through, starting with a major announcement from Apple - and some other big Xbox moves:

Finally, you may have seen The Pokemon Company’s announcement - regarding Palworld, obviously - that “we intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokémon.”

We have no idea exactly what this means, but social media sketch-masters RDCWorld have some ideas about the ‘behind the scenes’ intrigue. (Take a close look at who else their ‘lawyer’ is texting during this skit…)

[We’re GameDiscoverCo, an agency based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your PC or console game? We run the newsletter you’re reading, and provide consulting services for publishers, funds, and other smart game industry folks.]

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