Free to play (FtP) has been a standard in the mobile games industry for over a decade now. In the PC and console world it became a bigger topic around 2017-18 when Fortnite took the world by storm. Suddenly, every large publisher needed to have their own FtP title.
But free to play really started at a meaningful level much earlier, on PC. There are the classics outside of Steam – Runescape (2001), Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (2003), Silkroad Online (2007) as well as examples on Steam – Team Fortress 2 (2007), DOTA 2 (2013) and so on.
Which brings us to the state of free to play games on Steam in 2024. This report explores the popularity of FtP within Steam and looks at the top games over time.
You’re not going to believe trend number 4! (just baiting you to read the report)
Video Game Insights provides free articles and market reports as well as a comprehensive data and intelligence platform for developers, publishers and investors. Use the menu on the left to explore our tools or search for any game or games company in the search bar above to get started now.
Games database now includes more metrics for our business subscribers
Business subscribers will now find 4 new groups of columns they can add to the tables – units, revenue, # of promos and average CCU by year.
Users can now easily see and compare how games have performed over the years.
All of the data is available as Excel downloads for the Business subscribers as per usual.
This will significantly improve the ability to do custom research and analysis with our datasets. We’re excited to hear how you’re using the new capabilities to drive business performance.
We’re pushing a major new update to the platform – wishlist estimates.
All Indie and Business subscribers will now be able to see how many outstanding wishlists any game has.
This includes:
Track weekly wishlist change in the Top Charts:
You can now see the biggest wishlist gains in the Top Charts, just like you already do for units sold, CCU and other metrics.
See how many outstanding wishlists any game has
Outstanding wishlists now appear in the individual games pages AND historical trends (but only starting from March 6th 2024 right now).
What about accuracy?
We’ve tested our estimates, and for majority of games, the accuracy tends to be in the same +-15% margin of error that we also aim achieve for our other metrics.
We’ll be publishing public test results soon!
Meanwhile, we are collecting datapoints to continue testing and refining our estimates. If you see large discrepancies, please do reach out!
We’re thrilled to announce an update to the VGI platform that’s set to redefine your data interaction experience. Our tables have undergone a significant transformation, now featuring a more modern design. With customisable tables and streamlined design, we empower users to explore information in a more personal and engaging way.
Customise Your View
One key update we’re excited about is the ability to choose what data you see. At the heart of this update is a new icon located at the top of our table. A simple click on this icon unveils a dialog box, granting you the ability to select the columns you wish to view. Your preferences are saved and automatically applied on every visit to the page.
Tailor Your Data, Focus on What Matters
We understand everyone has different needs when looking at data. Whether you’re interested in the latest game releases, pricing, rating or reviews, our platform now enables you to streamline your data for a faster, more efficient, and personalised experience.
Try It Out
Check out the updated tables on the VGI platform and see how easy it is to adapt your data view. Give it a go and let us know what you think!
Stay tuned for more updates and features designed to improve your VGI experience.
We’ve released something you’ve long requested for – filters for genre analytics!
Genre analytics is a tool that allows players to quickly see which sub-genres over- and underperform in the market. These new filters allow you to narrow down the pool of games being looked at.
Example on how to use the tool:
Say you’re an indie developer thinking of genres to focus on for your new game.
You’d go to genre analytics and pick the following filters:
Indie games only – exclude any AAA titles to make it more relevant
Price $9.99-39.99 – you’re considering a paid game, but under the high end 59.99 or 69.99 price points
At least 10 reviews – leaving out all tiny hobby projects
Min pos rating of 70% – let’s assume your game will not be hated
First release date – 2019 or later – make sure to only include more recent games in the landscape
This will leave you with over 8000 games in the comparison set and give you a picture that looks something like this:
Open world survival craft, colony sim and 4x games dominate that landscape. Say you like the idea of colony sims. Let’s dig deeper and add that as a filter.
From here, we can tell that survival element of colony sims (unsurprisingly) makes huge difference to games of this subgenre.
From here, a developer could look at the games database with the same filters and explore survival colony sim games and look at individual games in that niche.
Exciting news for our users! We’ve launched Competitive Maps, a new feature on our Competitive Insights page. It offers a thorough analysis of games, comparing their market performance in sales, revenue, player engagement, and more.
Key Features:
Compare multiple games to see how they’re doing in the market.
Rank games by metrics like sales or playtime.
Use logarithmic view for better data comparison.
Benefits for All Users:
Indie developers can download charts as images for presentations and discussions.
Business accounts can export charts as Excel sheets for deeper data analysis.
Competitive Maps is your new ally in navigating the competitive landscape of the gaming industry. Start leveraging this feature to sharpen your market strategy and decisions.
We’re happy to release a long requested feature – customizable dashboard. All users who are logged in are now able to see their own home screen – customizable with the most relevant charts, tables and news.
The first version of the dashboard has 4 types of widgets you can add:
Top games – showing the top 10 games of last week by followers, units sold, revenue and more
Steam market size – an up to date view of how the Steam market has grown
Latest articles and reports – recently published analysis from our team
Game performance – summary performance of any selected game on Steam
This is only the beginning. We’ll be adding many more widgets to the dashboard soon enough. These include custom alerts, genre analytics, game comparison views and more.
Wondering how the PC gaming market managed to achieve its highest ever revenues in 2023? Our global pc market report 2024 unveils the driving forces behind the growth as well as industry trends that will guide the market in the next 5 years.
The PC market set records in 2023 with highest ever revenues, units sold, peak players online and number of games released on Steam.
2023 saw over $9bn gross full game revenue generated on Steam with 580 million game copies sold and about 14,000 new games released.
Total gross revenue from game sales (excluding microtransactions) grew by 17.8% in 2023. This comes after several years of flat revenues as the games industry was recovering from the COVID boom.
PC games market will continue to grow at approximately 5% per year for the foreseeable future. However, 2024 is expected to be a down year. A weaker slate of new releases, combined with an exceptional 2023, makes it challenging to forecast growth for 2024, despite some positive tailwinds.
The PC games industry has become increasingly “winner takes it all” over the last 8 years. Top 10 releases of 2023 made up 61% of the total revenue generated by new releases.
Steam covers vast majority of the PC market these days and the trends on Steam are broadly reflective of other, much smaller PC games stores. Therefore, our report is largely based on Steam data.
Video Game Insights is not affiliated with Steam or Valve and all data provided is estimates.
Explore our platform to learn more
Video Game Insights is powering the creativity in the games industry through data. We provide free articles and market reports as well as a comprehensive data and intelligence platform for developers, publishers and investors. Use the menu on the left to explore our tools or search for any game or games company in the search bar above.
In this pre-Christmas update, we’ve revamped our game page. Let’s explore these new features, which provide deeper insights into the gaming universe.
1. Visual Media Display
Firstly, our game page now features a new visual media section. Located at the top, it includes game screenshots, images, and videos. Users can get a quick visual insight into the game’s world. The section highlights the game’s environment and graphics.
Carousel-like visual component containing game media.
2. In-Depth Commercial Performance Chart
The biggest change is our Commercial Performance chart. This chart provides detailed insights into a game’s market performance, including estimated sales and total revenue. The tool is invaluable for industry professionals.
Indie developers can download commercial data charts as an image. Business accounts have the added option to export these charts as Excel sheets.
Commercial Performance chart with filters for period, metrics, and export options.
3. Updated Player Insights Chart
Finally, we’ve enhanced our Player Insights chart to improve user-friendliness. All options are now neatly organised in a dropdown menu. Existing metrics remain available and unchanged. The updated design focuses on ease of navigation and quick data access.
This chart is especially valuable for our premium users. For indie developers, it offers key insights into player demographics by region. Thus, they gain a better understanding of their audience.
The business accounts benefit from more extensive data. They receive detailed game metrics from country split of sales to player engagement levels. This comprehensive information is vital for making informed decisions in the competitive gaming market.
Revamped Player Insights chart.
This latest update significantly enhances the Game Page, building upon the previous improvements.
Examine the example Valheim Game Page to see these features in action. Stay informed and ahead in the gaming world with our enhanced game page. Happy exploring!
Steam has been hitting records across many metrics as we’re entering the holiday period. Full Game revenue for 2023 has already beat last year’s and we’ve still got a busy month ahead.
Black Friday performance is no exception. A year of strong game releases tied to unprecedented attractive promo deals has pushed 2023 Black Friday to highest units sold ever.
User engagement keeps breaking records on Steam despite the post-covid normalization
Covid helped to boost the whole games industry with people stuck inside and nothing better to do. New people picked up gaming as a hobby and old gamers had more time to game. The post-covid world has been tough for the games industry – years of growth that culminated with a peak in 2020 have turned to stagnation and even decline.
The exception to this has been the PC gaming space where Steam has continued to hit new record levels of engagement. Peak active users have continued to push past the Covid peak of April 2020.
The Black Fridays are no exception – 2023 November saw another record in terms of peak active players in-game on Steam.
However, this growth in engagement has clearly slowed. In fact, 2023 November peak was only 3.4% higher than last year’s.
At least partly, availability of the next generation of consoles can be blamed for this slowdown. It’s been 3 years since PlayStation 5 and Xbox X were released, but it wasn’t till 2023 that the supply really started to catch up with the demand. People who had to substitute their preferred console for PC are now able to return to… well, let’s be serious – to PlayStation.
2023 is a year of significant growth after the stagnating Black Friday sales on Steam in 2021-22
Even though engagement continued strong on Steam, units sold have stagnated since 2020. Players had a large library of existing games to play and new releases were underwhelming or delayed.
2023 broke that with a strong release slate. While some of these anticipated releases underperformed expectations (Starfield, anyone?), others beat even the wildest of predictions (Baldur’s Gate 3).
This has resulted in the strongest ever Black Friday sales on Steam, beating 2022 by 14%.
Deeper discounts were the first tool to be used by publishers in the fight for limited attention
2023 has been a tough year for many publishers as the market is getting increasingly saturated and new player growth has slowed. A natural response to that has been discounting more to boost visibility and discoverability.
EA Sports FC was on 50% sale across all platforms less than 2 months after release – the steepest ever promo for them.
Other big name 2023 releases have also gone as far as 40% off less than a year since release. Although not atypical for large titles, the amount of discounted big releases still played a role during the Black Friday.
Slightly declining Black Friday revenue is a sign of fiercer competition among publishers for an increasingly fixed size of the pie
Higher engagement and record units sold failed to translate into higher revenues during Black Friday.
In fact, while units were up +14% YoY, full game revenue was down -1.5%. This was largely driven by steeper than usual discounts boosting units, but at lower average selling price. Players’ overall lower disposable income this year and higher competition between games due to strong releases has led to a push to the bottom as publishers are fighting for attention
Price pressure likely to continue as the games industry is facing increased supply and peaking demand
The decline in average game selling price is likely to continue as several games industry dynamics push the prices to the same direction:
Subscription platforms such as Xbox Game Pass are likely to continue to offer great value for money in the coming years with many day 1 releases appearing free on the platforms
Economic downturn is affecting consumers’ disposable income, leading to a decrease in spending on non-essential items, including video games. Publishers are already responding by offering more discounts to maintain sales volume
Slowdown in gamer growth is a global trend as Covid pulled many gamers to be forward. The markets that continue to grow tend to be more price sensitive. The new users that aren’t already gamers tend to be more casual, also pushing down spend
Increased competition between publishers on the ultra-premium games side. Many AAA publishers have adapted the same strategy of fewer, but higher quality games released
Lower costs on indie studios through easy-to-use game engines like Unreal Engine 5 and AI support in asset creation helps small teams to create increasingly complex games, increasing the overall supply of good quality games
Longer and more replayable games have been a trend for many years now. However, the evergreen nature of some of these games is creating a dynamic not seen in the games industry before where new releases compete for attention with games that are over 10 years old
The pressure to discount sooner and deeper will be good for gamers in the short term. However, the increased pressure on studio margins will likely result in more redundancies, streamlining and efficiency, which ultimately might not be the right formula for best games.
