Report: 7,672 games were released on Steam in 2017

Steam Spy is a third-party site that scrapes information from Steam to estimate sales information and publishes the data on its web page. The accuracy isn’t perfect, but it’s one of the few windows players and the press are given to look into how games are performing if the developer or publisher aren’t willing to share sales information.

And Steam Spy has some impressive news to share: 7,672 games were released on Steam in 2017.

There wasn’t really a quiet day in 2017 to launch your game, as Steam is now a constant flood of new releases. While the vast majority of these games aren’t going to be competitive in terms of sales or quality, it’s no longer possible to rely on Steam itself as a discovery mechanism for players to find your game.

But that also hasn’t been the case for some time, as 2016 was also a very busy year for the service.

It can be a bit hard to read those numbers, but the chart states that 4,207 games were released on Steam in 2016, which was 38 percent of all Steam games to date at that time. That’s a big jump from the 2,964 games that were released in 2015, and the 1,772 that were released in 2014. Only 565 games were released in 2013.

These numbers will only continue to go up now that Steam Greenlight has been replaced by Steam Direct, a system that allows anyone to self-publish their game for $100.

The barrier to entry is getting lower, and the number of games that seek their fortunes on Steam are going to continue to rise. Discoverability will continue to be an issue as well, making promotion and building a community before the launch of your game even more important.