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Valve has published its annual Best of Steam list for 2024, ranking the year’s top games in various categories. The top-sellers list for 2024 bears a lot of similarity to that one 2023, with one notable exception: Starfield is nowhere to be seen.
Valve doesn’t release sales data for individual games, so we can’t say how much any particular title on the list pulled in: Instead, they’re randomly sorted in “buckets”—platinum, gold, silver, and bronze—indicating their relative success. Given the number of games released every month on Steam, even a bronze-tier ranking represents a significant success.
Five of the 12 games in the platinum category—PUBG Battlegrounds, Destiny 2, Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2, and Apex Legends—are free to play, and all five were ranked in the same category in 2023, a testament to the lucrative value of a free-to-play hit. At the other end of the spectrum, Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3 are both hanging in there: Elden Ring no doubt benefited from the release of the outstanding Shadow of the Erdtree expansion in June, but Baldur’s Gate 3 maintaining its spot more than a year after release—with numerous meaty updates to its credit but no full-on DLC—is something of a surprise. Black Myth: Wukong and Helldivers 2 also made the cut, as did Space Marine 2, Black Ops 6, and Palworld.
As I mentioned, I also find it interesting that Starfield has dropped out of the list completely. Every platinum game from 2023 is somewhere in the 2024 ranking—further down the list in some cases (Sons of the Forest, for instance, is a bronze tier game this year)—but Starfield, unless I’ve overlooked it, is completely out. That’s not meant as a dump on Starfield, I just find it genuinely surprising: Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG didn’t live up to the hype when it launched in August 2023 but that was an almost impossible bar to reach anyway, and it’s not like it was a bad game, just not the expected leap forward on the formula.
The seeming drop-off in interest in Starfield (from a sales perspective, at least) is particularly notable given that the much older Fallout 4 is still on the list, and although it doesn’t make bestsellers lists anymore, the 13-year-old Skyrim is a prime example of a game with long term sales success, and has been re-released on every platform known to mankind.
Among new releases, Path of Exile 2 made the platinum tier despite only coming out a few weeks ago, as did Stalker 2, which is great to see. The hit strategy-city build Manor Lords is also up there, as is Dragon’s Dogma 2, Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero, and the annual updates of NBA 2K and EA FC.
I also find the list of most played games on Steam Deck to be notable because it’s such an incredible jumble of, well, everything. Stardew Valley, Balatro, and Vampire Survivors are rubbing shoulders with Cyberpunk 2077, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Elden Ring, a blend that reflects just how capable Valve’s handheld gaming really is.
Other categories in the 2024 roundup include the games most played with a controller, some of which makes sense to me (Elden Ring, although it’s not how I roll) and some which do not (Apex Legends, really? You’ve got a mouse and controller right here), and top VR games based on revenue. The full rundown of the year’s biggest games on Steam, and links to previous annual rankings (although the 2017 and ’18 rankings don’t appear to be working at the moment) are up at store.steampowered.com.
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Kurt Indovina
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