Last year, it was hard to imagine how Steam’s cadence of new game releases could get even harder to stay on top of, but though we’re only in October, more games have launched on Steam this year than across all of 2016.
Daniel Ahmad, an analyst for Niko Partners, noted the increase yesterday. He expects the number to pass 6,000 games by the end of the year. This is up almost 2,000 from last year, according to Steam Spy.
Steam Direct is a significant contributor to the rise in new game launches. It started in June and made releasing on the platform a lot simpler. There’s just a $100 app fee and some forms to fill out. In its first couple of months, the number of new releases was double what we saw in the same period last year.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Valve have been able to keep up with the new releases, and Steam today continues to be a hard-to-parse nightmare. The discovery problem hasn’t improved; it’s gotten worse.
Greenlight isn’t looking so bad now.
Cheers, Gamesindustry.biz.