Steam is flooded and attention is concentrated: — games launched in 2024, and the top 1% of them hold —% of that year's reviews. For an indie studio the data points to a $10–30 price, a midweek launch, an underserved niche, and an early access that ends better than it began.
Games released in 2024
—
2015: —; 2025: —
2024 releases with under 10 reviews
—%
Top 1% hold —% of the cohort's reviews
$10–19.99 games reaching 100+ reviews
—%
Under $5: —% (paid games, 2019–2024)
Recommending after early access
—%
Down from —% during it; median of — games
Games only (software, demos, playtests, servers and soundtracks excluded).
Top 1% of each year's games: their share of that cohort's reviews. Older cohorts have had longer to collect reviews, so the under-10 share rises partly with age.
Each dot is a user tag. Across: games that list it in their top 5 (2018–2023). Up: median reviews per game. Green = underserved, red = crowded. Log scales.
OLS on 56,666 paid games (2019–2024) with year and month fixed effects: % difference in reviews, other factors held equal. Associations, not causes.
Share of games released 2019–2024 that reached 100+ reviews.
Share of paid games released 2019–2024 that reached 100+ reviews, by launch day.
Share of 41.2M reviews that recommend the game, by the reviewer's hours played.
Median change in each game's % recommending vs its own launch month, percentage points. The pooled rate rises, but within games it stays flat: a mix effect.
Sources: Steam Games Dataset by FronkonGames (124,146 apps, MIT); Game Recommendations on Steam by Anton Kozyriev (— reviews, 2010–2022, Kaggle). Part of a data analysis portfolio: Python, DuckDB SQL and statsmodels.