One might wonder: how many games are on Steam? Valve’s digital distribution service has been chugging along nicely ever since its launch, establishing a reputation as the premiere place to buy digital games on the PC ecosystem. (You can also buy movies, anime, and software, but most people are probably there for the games.) It’s such an incredibly massive platform that the natural question of how many games it hosts arises after a short browse through the store’s offerings.
Amazingly, Steam just passed a hell of a milestone. Valve essentially launched the platform as a vehicle for patching their games before it gradually snowballed into the storefront we know and love today. While they’ve certainly had their fair share of missteps, the market has deemed Steam to be the place to sell your game if you want to reach the largest audience on PC. That popularity has steadily grown at an astonishing rate, and now the storefront has just reached an impressive figure.
How many games are on Steam? – The massive milestone
Let’s get right down to the magic number: 30,000. That’s how many games are on Steam right now. PC Gamer breaks down the numbers with a little help from SteamSpy, a website that tracks various statistics about the platform. What’s more surprising is just how many of those games were released very recently.
According to SteamSpy, 9,300 games were launched in 2018. 2017 saw the release of 6,700 games in total. That means that nearly one-third of the games on Steam were released last year and more than half of them were released in the last two years. This also happens to coincide with the changes to Steam Greenlight that essentially opened up the platform to anyone with a hundred bucks and a game to sell.
Now, if anyone asks you how many games are on Steam, you can tell them the correct answer with confidence—at least for a little while. If things keep pace, 2020 will have a very different number of games on the platform. I’d wager that we’ll hit 40,000 before 2019 is through—and who knows what the future holds!
