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Valve has released the Steam year in review for 2024, in which the platform holder drowns us all in lovely stats and gives a snapshot of how we behave on the de facto PC gaming standard. Turns out people really love their Steam Decks!
One of the most interesting deep-dives comes near the end, when Valve goes into detail on new customers: Essentially breaking down why people create a Steam account, and then their general behaviour afterwards. Surprise surprise, Valve has “seen an encouraging pattern” around new users.
“Hit new releases are excellent at generating new first-time purchasers, and we’ve tried to build many platform features to encourage those new users to stick around, find more great games, and play with friends,” writes the Valve business team.
“To gather data illustrating the effectiveness of that approach, we went all the way back to 2023 and identified the biggest 20 releases of that year. We looked at every new first-time purchaser generated by those products (that is, an account making a purchase, or redeeming a Steam key, for the first time) for a total of 1.7 million new users. Then we followed that cohort of new users.”
So of those 1.7 million new accounts generated by 2023’s biggest releases, here’s what they did from January 2024 through to early March 2025.
“The 1.7 million customers who originated from a top 2023 release went on to enjoy more than 141 million hours of playtime in additional games, on top of any playtime from the game that brought them onboard.
“And they weren’t just playing games—they were buying new ones, too. That cohort of players has gone on to spend $20 million on in-game transactions across hundreds of other games—plus another $73 million on premium games and DLC across thousands more products.”
Not only did these 1.7 million new users stick around beyond their initial purchase, in other words, but they went on to spend a further $93 million dollars in just over a year. That’s roughly $55 apiece which, if you’re sensible about when and what you buy on Steam, could stretch very far indeed (or you could just buy Sims expansions).
Valve reckons that this kind of stat proves that “Steam isn’t just a storefront—it provides social community, game discoverability, interactive events, and a deep set of game-enhancing features to attract and retain players who will be checking out new games in the future.”
It’s hard to argue with that, though there is another nugget when Valve later goes on to discuss one of 2024’s most successful launches by a first-time dev, TCG Card Shop Simulator by Malaysian studio OPNeon. Valve is particularly interested in this because (a) it’s a solo dev and (b) Malaysia only accounts for 0.5% of Steam’s global traffic.
Essentially, TCG Card Shop Simulator’s success is illustrating that anyone, anywhere has a shot at success on Steam, even a first-time solo developer from a relatively small (in terms of player numbers) region. It sold over a million copies in its first month, and Valve is particularly pleased that the audience make-up reflects the platform’s global reach: “The game’s 10 biggest regions by units are Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Pakistan, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.”
The kicker? “Remember those new users we mentioned above—the ones who made their first purchase on a top new release in 2023 and stuck around to buy more games? About 10,000 of them went on to buy TCG Card Shop Sim!”
10,000 of 1.7 million may not seem like much but, then again, we’re talking about a very niche title here. You could in fact make an argument that those 10,000 sales show just how successful Steam is at retaining new PC gamers, and somehow surfacing content that interests them enough to make a purchase.
I actually find it difficult to remember when Steam wasn’t a part of my PC gaming experience, but I’m a grizzled old hand now: The new blood continues to pour in, and either way the wider message is clear. Not only is Steam growing at a prodigious rate, and continually breaking records “for most players online and most players in-game”, but those new users are very much liking what they find.
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Kurt Indovina
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