In a nutshell: After Spotify’s Recap gave us a glimpse into our listening habits, Steam’s personal recap is right here to unravel our gaming patterns over the previous yr. This yr’s information dump has been renamed from 2023’s “Year In Review” again to the great previous “Steam Replay” – and it tells a slightly nostalgic story.
While shiny new releases grabbed headlines in 2024, it was the older titles that actually dominated our playtime. A whopping 37% of complete gaming hours on Steam went to titles launched eight or extra years in the past. However, the lion’s share went to the “trendy classics” from the final 1-7 years which took up a good chunkier 47% share.
Interestingly, Cutting-edge 2024 releases accounted for simply 15% of playtime. Why, it’s possible you’ll ask? The reply is extra sophisticated than everything of Steam’s participant base merely being too previous to benefit from the newest and best titles. In reality, as identified by PC Gamer, it is a sample we have seen over the previous few years; the newest determine is definitely decrease than the 17% mark set in 2022, although it is up from the 9% seen in 2023.
The actual reply is the prolonged lifespans of huge names like Counter-Strike, Dota 2, and PUBG skewing the numbers. The trio continues to occupy the highest three spots by the variety of present gamers. That’s to not say there aren’t some legit new hit video games, although.
For occasion, Path of Exile 2 and Marvel Rivals have been each launched this yr and are occupying the fourth and fifth spots on the identical listing.
The co-op shooter Helldivers 2, NovaLogic’s revived Delta Force, and the favored free-to-play Banana have all posted spectacular numbers, too. Meanwhile, on the single-player facet, the Chinese mythology-inspired motion/journey Black Myth: Wukong has offered over 10 million models to this point.
Still, relating to our cumulative gaming habits, it is clear that the previous reliables reign supreme.
Another issue is the sheer variety of older titles on Steam. With over 200,000 video games created over a decade in the past on the platform, in comparison with simply 18,000 contemporary 2024 releases, we PC players have an countless backlog of traditional hits to revisit and reminisce over.
