After nearly a decade of developing video games, Valve began selling them in 2003, when Day of Defeat, Mafia, and updated versions of Half-Life and Counter Strike were the kinds of games that could be found on the then-new Steam (and are still sold there).
In 2019, and specifically in recent weeks, the hugely popular online store has had around 30,000 video games available – 29,892 to be exact. And if we include DLC and other software on offer, that number exceeds 50,000 products, as PC Gamer noted.
These numbers may seem insignificant, but the impressive pace of evolution of video games and Steam over the last 16 years, especially since 2017, has become clear.
According to Steamspy, nearly 9,300 video games were released in 2018, and about 6,700 in 2017. That means more than half – about 53% – of the games available on Steam were released in the last two years.
To put it more clearly, according to RPS, this means an average of 154 games released every week on Steam, over its -13-year- lifespan.
Obviously, there was no way that so many new titles would be coming to the online store in 2003. So the average of 154 games per week has been achieved through a significant increase in Steam listings in recent years, which is pretty scary.
But what about the future of Steam? Would it be difficult to expect more than 10,000 new video games in 2019? If we take into account previous data, maybe not.
That will happen as long as Steam continues its dominance of the online store space. The arrival of stiff competition, with the cheaper Epic Games Store and the upcoming Discord Store, could push Valve's 40,000-game milestone off the table.
