19,000 games and 80% of them are a ghost town.

So, this year over 19,000 games were released on Steam and Hermits are not buying them or playing them as a report states that 80% of them have few or no players.

"Over on LinkedIn, Twitch’s head of games Bill Youngposted an interesting breakdownof how the majority of video game releasing on Steam these days are limited. According to SteamDB, in2024 18,992 games were released on Steam. But only4,041 of those gamesracked up enough sales and attracted enough players to escape limited status. That means 14,951 games launched last year on Valve’s digital PC storefront were barely played or purchased."

So, it seems PC is where games go to die, well with over 25% of gamers stealing their games on PC this is not even a surprise nor is it a trend as it's been getting gradually larger every year.

It's weird how Hermits brag about spending thousands on their graphics cards, but don't buy games to use on them, this article is just proof of it, for shame Hermits.

That’s just a stupid amount of games to be released in a year. I imagine that the vast majority of those games are those 99 cent asset flip “games”. Can’t blame folks for not buying those.

Imagine complaining about PC gamers not buying all 19,000 games released in a single year.😂

"Steam and Hermits are not buying them or playing them" At $1 per game it is $19,000. 19,000 games equates to 52 new games every day.

Some people just don't think before posting.🤭

Yeah but to be fair it's mostly porn.

No fap FTW!

Literally been hearing this for decades.

Keep it coming.

Well duh that's why we aren't buying games we have to save for expensive video cards.

No, you.

You shame!

@mrbojangles25: 132 million mua on Steam, and even if we take the 33 million who admit to stealing their games that still leaves a 100 million users, so 19k is a drop in the bucket.

As I've always said Hermits support hardware not software, for shame Jangles, for shame 🤦‍♂️

My resident stalkers in here 🤣

How the hell am I gonna buy 19,000 games, let alone play that many. What the frick logic is this.

99% of what gets released on Steam is poo and Valve doesn't exercise quality control. Anybody can put anything on there. I remember hearing in 2017 Steam had more games released that year than all the previous years combined. Publisher will often re-list their games again and again just to push them to the front of the store.

@nod_eclipse_: Who said you needed to buy all 19k?

There's 132 million of you guys, and yet 14k of those games were hardly bought.

Just goes to show you Hermits don't support devs by buying games.

@lamprey263: Are you saying that 14 of the 19k are total garbage?

So much for a master race then, just peasants in the end.

Kotaku

Just dropping the link and article below that explains it a bit more. Games that arrive on Steam are "limited" at first and they go through a quality check (based on popularity & sales) against shovelware & scams. If this wasn't put in place then we would see even more random games flooding Steam as it states in the last paragraph.

It's like on Playstation and you'll go to the store and you'll come across the worst low effort games ever but Sony doesn't have any type of quality control in that they'll legit let anything through and some people like trophy hunters will snag those cheap $1-5 games just to get the platinum trophy to boost their profile. I don't know how it is on Xbox or Nintendo if the have better control...but yeah

I prefer quality over quantity

Before any of this will make sense, we first need to explain what a “Profile Features Limited” game, often referred to as simply a “limited game,” is on Steam. Well, years ago Valve implemented cool stuff like Steam achievements, game cards, and badges. These are great features that incentivize people to play and buy more games. However, not long after these features were added to Steam, some shady devs started creating very basic “games” that were just designed to pad achievements, give players cheap cards to trade, and increase their collection stats. So Valve came up with a solution to stop that stuff.

As explained by Valve via its Steam documentation website, games arrive on Steam “limited” and missing features like trading cards. Only games that meet a certain (undisclosed) popularity and sales threshold are able to escape this limited status. The idea is that this is a quality check against shovelware and scams. And if you’re curious how many games released on Steam in 2024 are limited, well, the answer is a lot.

Over on LinkedIn, Twitch’s head of games Bill Young posted an interesting breakdown of how the majority of video game releasing on Steam these days are limited. According to SteamDB, in 2024 18,992 games were released on Steam. But only 4,041 of those games racked up enough sales and attracted enough players to escape limited status. That means 14,951 games launched last year on Valve’s digital PC storefront were barely played or purchased.

That 14,951 works out to 79% of all games released on Steam in 2024. And this isn’t a new trend, as pointed out by Young. In 2020, 66 percent of all games launched on Steam were limited. In 2022, that number reached 72 percent. And now, it’s up to nearly 80 percent. If you’re curious about how 2025 is going to shake out, well, we’re only 13 days into the year and 444 games have already released on Steam. 389 of them are limited.

Some might argue that Valve shouldn’t throttle or limit any of these games. But the reality is that we would likely see an increase in shovelware, scams, and asset flips if Valve completely took down the barriers it currently has in place. And I don’t think the world needs 200,000 random games suddenly flooding Steam.

Wtf is the point

Game prices are skyrocketing, companies are making the same uninspired movie shit production line crap. Buggy messes more interested in spamming tier plans how to buy the game.

Shitheads.

On the other hand, that means almost 4,000 games released on Steam last year that people played.

No wonder people always say that the PC has the biggest and best library. You'd be lucky to get one playable game per month on the PS5.

Huh? biggest yes, best? hardly, even Hermits have proven that's not the case with nearly 15k unsold. More like Hermits don't like to support the hobby they play, they kinda like building a PC to sit around and look at, Lego is much cheaper 🤣

On a side not PC and consoles have around 95%of the same library when it comes to AAA games, so not sure where you're getting 1 playable game a month on console.

Are you saying Steam had 19k movie games last year? It's just that you Hermits don't like to spend money except on hardware.

You would be hard pressed to find a Hermit on here who bought 24 games last year (2 a month) hence why a shit ton of games go unsold.

Pc gamers tend to be disgusting thief's, but if a game is very good, they will buy it.

Publishers treat and act like the consumer are shit to be milked, and whine like babies they get treated like trash back.

Doesn't matter whether a game is good or bad thieves are gonna steal them anyway, you of all people know this considering your buddy gets a LOT of his games from the back of a truck so to speak.

Also why do you lump all publishers in together? those who make f2p and live service crap yes as that's their business model, but there are plenty of good publishers out there too who make SP games.

PC Gamers:

”Look how many games I can play on PC!” - doesn’t play most of them
”Look how many teraflops my GPU has!” - plays games that are not graphics intensive at all
“PC gaming is the cheapest!” - spends hundreds of dollars on a GPU alone

It’s clear that PC gamers are the most insecure of the bunch!

The gaming industry is objectively full of scum who view us as shit.

The only time they cry is when developers feel they aren't being treated right and expect us to care.

That's a lot of games... Certainly no person can possibly play that much content not should be expected to. Sounds like PC is an open market, but that doesn't mean it isn't flooded ...

This is a developer issue, not a gamer issue.

@TheEroica: Something that is lost in OP is that the remaining 20% of the 19,000 he keeps trivializing is ~3,800 in a single year. That is greater than the lifetime of games on either Xbox and PS.

So what I'm reading is the worlds most popular handheld PC also has the world's largest library ... Just stop it.

The PC jealousy and hatred is strong in this thread lol. One says they PC gaming is irrelevant but makes a thread about how many games get released on the platform, and the other says PC gamers are insecure but comes to a PC thread to make sweeping generalizations. The irony is hilariously palpable.

OP is jealous of the quantity of titles that Steam has.

A lot of gamers just play one or two games. How many people just buy an xbox or playstation just for COD or Fortnite? Too many.

Heck I fall into the trap of just playing Helldivers 2 and not playing anything else. HD2 is just easier to jump in and play than some single players games I'm trying to complete right now

The Pee Salty Seas are very rough and turbulent this time of year. lol :P

I wonder if key activations from other sites are accounted for here? You can often find better deals on Steam games on places like Fanatical and Humble monthly gets you 10ish games a month.

Unless you're involved in someway like an investor in these products, why do you care how much a video game is being played or purchased? For its longevity, the companies financial gain??

If that's your way with all that 'loyality' then you must love Live Service gaming.

Frankly we owe these companies nothing. Nothing.

Look at Platinum Games, they're seemingly dying from the overly-long development hell that was Bayonetta 3. And my answer to that is 'maybe you should have made a better game'. This is coming from someone who thinks Vanquish, Bayonetta 1 & Bayo2 are some of the greatest games ever made. Bayonetta 3 came out after Devil May Cry V, and of the two I'd recommend DMCV any day of the week.

I've been playing MH4G on a 3DS and over a custom server, this game is old as hell. You think I care if anything released in 2025 January?? nope. Only game in the near future I give a **** about is Monster Hunter Wilds!

Sure games like Team Fortress and Quake benefit with having real players over bots but as customers/ players you have no obligation to play games to help keep the player-count high.

Make an interesting product and people will buy it, just don't expect a game to remain relevant. The number of games that remain relevant for years is less than 1%.

Play games, when you want.

@last_lap: Facetious is as Facetious does, lol.

Anyway, dude that means there are thousands of games we do collectively play on PC, yearly. Which in turn means our library dwarfs anything you'll find on any console...many times over.

I'm gonna chime into Mr. Dani California here:

@mrbojangles25 said:

@last_lap said:

So, this year over 19,000 games were released ...

Yeah but to be fair it's mostly porn.

@last_lap said:

... Hermits are not buying them or playing them.

No fap FTW!

@last_lap said:

...it seems PC is where games go to die

Literally been hearing this for decades.

Keep it coming.

@last_lap said:

...It's weird how Hermits brag about spending thousands on their graphics cards, but don't buy games to use on them.

Well duh that's why we aren't buying games we have to save for expensive video cards.

@last_lap said:

...for shame Hermits.

No, you.

You shame!

1. I don't know all about that. But I do know for a fact there are too damn many Hentai games on Steam and half the time, they are all shit...except for Kagura Games. At least they can be storytelling and their H-scenes are just icing on the cake.
2. Fap? What Fap? Next question.
3. That statement from Last_Lap has always been BS and it's just a lousy myth to begin with. I'm surprised few people still believe it.
4. Buying games isn't the problem, half the time, we either have the game already or we just have over 300 games in our backlog. Some of us would rather play the games we already bought which helps us not spend on newer games and we'll be able to save money on buying GPUs/CPUs in the long run.
5. There is no shame, we PC gamers tend to be wiser on how we spend our hard-earned money. Remember Last_Lap, PC is a high-risk reward.

What a Sinful thread Last_Lap cook here😂🤣

Gamers, typically PC gamers only playing a couple of games for years is a factor

90% of my gaming playtime has been on Rust, other PC gamers are probably similar with other games like CSGo etc.

All I know is: Davillain is that statistic of one single player on the planet that bought that hentai game that you're reading about in that article.

Er...that's normal. The vast majority of games released, regardless of platform, fall flat on their face.

I remember reading about the 80% failure rate back in the 90s.

https://www.mobygames.com/platform/playstation-4/

According to this list a TOTAL of around 11500 games were released on the ps4 during its entire lifetime! Or in other words, in a single year pc got almost double that! I mean we are called MASTER RACE for a god damn reason!

Well, how many of those remaining games weren't just dollar games or adult apps? That removes like 10k right there.. lol.

Well considering you Hermits don't buy 80% of them you guys should be renamed to the vaporware race 🤣

On a more serious note, your lord and saviour in the fatman Gaben should actually regulate what goes on his platform as there are a lot of games with malware in them that it's shameful, but he doesn't care as long as he gets his 30%.

@davillain: Nah mate the only sinful thing here is your fanbase, spend thousands on their "rigs" and hardly anything on software, for shame.

There are 14k not getting played, but you want to focus on the 4k you do lol, now that's being facetious.

@last_lap: Lol, no. The focus is on the fact that we PC gamers have oodles of more games than consoles dudes. On top of that, lol, we have all of your games, past and present.

Great to see PC having a plethora of games for people, never nothing to play.

@nod_eclipse_: Such the turn around from you being a hardcore cow to a hardcore Hermit, but you still posses the same fatal flaw, and that is you don't see, nor acknowledge such flaws in your platform(s) of choice, it's a character trait of yours, and not a good one, you should work on that.

Such is the power of PC. Truly wonderful box of circuits.

But don't get me wrong, hehe. I still have a house full of consoles. Just bought the Cowabunga collection on Switch today, in fact.

@fedor: That's a Hernits way of looking at it, a normal person sees it as you guys don't buy 80% of them, thus a waste of time for devs to put them on there.

That is unfortunate for those indie devs but at least they have something to put on a resume. Or it's just a hobby that they enjoy, so good for them. Either way I have a plethora of options, which is nice.

@fedor: It's a flooded market, I mean no wonder dev are starting to put crappy PC orientated games like (enter any name here) simulator games on console.

Yes, Hermits have options that's why over 25% of Hermits steal their games 🤦‍♂️

It is flooded, correct. Just like every entertainment media (books, music, video). You don't have to play or even pay attention to any of the "PC orientated" games you're speaking on.

I always get a kick when the pirates/emulators here argue the legality of their practices while someone in that community is getting the book thrown at them in real-time and their lives destroyed.

Usually these topics arise simultaneously when a big story like that breaks.