Ars analysis: ~80% of Steam games earn under $5K in first two weeks
https://tinyurl.com/thehvlt
It has been roughly two years now since Valve shut off the source of Steam
Spy's huge, randomly sampled sales estimates and promised a "more accurate
and more useful" replacement to come. We got our first glimpse of what that
replacement might entail today, as Valve gave a rare glimpse into its
treasure trove of aggregate sales data across thousands of PC games.
The blog post sharing that data correctly points out that the raw number of
games finding some minimum level of sales success on Steam has increased
vastly since 2012 (when Valve launched Steam Greenlight and loosened its
tight control of what games could appear on the storefront). But Valve's
selective view of the data leaves out a huge mass of games that make less
than $5,000 in their first two weeks on Steam's virtual shelves. An Ars
analysis finds those titles have made up the vast majority of Steam releases
for the last five years.
Filling in the holes
To get at that data for the charts above, we started with the graphs Valve
itself provided in its blog post today. These lay out the number of games
making over $5,000, $10,000, $50,000, $100,000, and $250,000 in their first
two weeks, respectively, by release year. I used photo editing software to
measure and convert the bars in those graphs into raw numbers, but the actual
numbers may be off by a fraction of a percentage point from Valve's internal
benchmarks (we didn't decipher the graphs for 2005 and 2006, when the total
number of Steam releases was too small to draw much meaningful data).
We then compared those numbers to the total number of Steam releases for each
year, as collected by Steam Spy (I removed non-game software and free-to-play
games from consideration, as Valve did in its data). Using that, we were able
to figure out the one number that Valve pointedly failed to mention for all
of these years: the games making less than $5,000 in that two-week launch
period.
As you can see in Fig. 3, this lowest tier of sales made up well under half
of all Steam releases through 2014, a year when Steam still saw less than
1,400 total games hit the storefront. By 2015, though, the raw number of
releases had ballooned to over 2,300, and our data shows that increase came
almost entirely from games that were struggling to make any significant sales
impact at launch.
Aurich Lawson
Since 2015, both the annual growth rate in Steam releases and the proportion
of those releases that struggled at launch continued to increase
exponentially, before leveling off in 2019. At this point, though, the ratio
of Steam releases that can't hit $5,000 in initial sales has hovered around
80 percent for the last three years.
As Valve acknowledges in its blog post, these launch window revenue cutoffs
are somewhat arbitrary. A game that makes $4,000 in a couple of weeks could
be considered a huge success for a hobbyist programmer just getting their
solo start. Initial sales also don't always capture the full picture for
games that may find success long after launch, as well.
But Valve also points out that "most recent games earning around $10,000 in
the first two weeks earned between $20,000 and $60,000 over the course of 12
months following release." Convert that to an annual revenue number for a
struggling indie developer, and you can see how launch window sales of under
$5,000 can easily be considered a commercial failure (though the calculus
changes if a developer can crank out multiple games per year or keep sales
steady for a multi-year period).
What does it mean?
There are two ways to look at these numbers. The first, which Valve focuses
on in its blog post, is the raw number of games in those "high initial
revenue" groupings (i.e. above $5,000). As you can see in Fig. 2 (and below),
the number of such titles generally rose slowly after Steam launched,
absolutely exploded in 2014 amid looser Steam Greenlight standards, and
continued to rise from that expanded number since then. Many more total games
are quickly finding a significant audience on Steam than ever before, and
Valve can rightly feel good about that.
But even as the number of successes on Steam has increased, the number of
failures has increased even more, both on an absolute and relative basis. For
developers, that means just getting a game on Steam isn't anything close to a
guarantee of being able to find a significant audience these days. For
players, that means sifting through Steam storefront listings full of a lot
of crap that apparently very few people want to buy.
Valve is constantly tinkering with its "discovery" algorithms to help with
both sides of this equation, and those algorithms do the best they can to
direct deserving games to their deserving audiences. But on a platform with
increasingly hands-off submission guidelines and dozens of games launching
every day, there are inevitably going to be a lot of losers in Steam's sales
lottery.
There are signs that things are improving, though. As Valve points out in its
blog post, the proportion of games reaching that $10,000 initial sales
milestone ticked up 11 percent from 2018 to 2019, slightly reducing the
"failure rate" for a generic Steam release in the last year. And the average
initial earnings for Steam games increased from 2018 to 2019 at all but the
lowest percentile levels.
Those numbers suggest that quality games are starting to find even larger
audiences on Steam these days, while weaker titles are proving even less
lucrative. That doesn't mean we'll be getting back to the relative "all
killer no filler" world of early Steam any time soon, but maybe we're
starting to get a little closer with each passing year.
Listing image by Getty / Aurich Lawson
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这数据说真的完全不让人意外。
这只是再次证明了以前有人讨论过的几个论点。
一、Steam的主要收入来自3A级大作的抽成，其它的能给Steam的收益不高。
二、游戏业的竞争越来越激烈，而Steam能给于的帮助也很有限。游戏数量越来越多，不可
能每个都能被玩家注意到，Steam的广告位也就那些。
另外这新闻其实也忽视了一件事。
那就是Steam上其实不少低成本的简单游戏，这些游戏能卖到五千美金都能回本了。

一堆粪G能卖出去就不错惹

垃圾Game一大堆能赚到就该偷哭了

一大堆粪GAME能卖出去就不错了

一堆粪Game是要卖什么啦

不得不说还真的有七八成看起来都很像粪game

就一堆垃圾Game啊

一堆只有图片的垃圾

特价机制也是个原因吧 steam基本上越晚买越便宜 所以除了少数3A大作会有够多预约以外 通常会观望一阵子 风评够好又特价了才会买

翻译 STEAM上面越来越多骗钱垃圾游戏

这样说也不对 有很多游戏是那种没特价根本不想买的

0~5000

EA的不知道算不算在内，算在内那也蛮正常的因为很多就是出来试水温，筹资继续磨

小游戏看的是长尾效应，这才是成功的点

开始卖钱就是发售了呀 XD

选择太多 不是特别有吸引力的就等免费特价

我是没逛小游戏的习惯,通常会买的小游戏都是网络上看到实况觉得好像不错,直接去搜寻

一堆连介绍让人看不下去的粪game，这数字很正常

像我真的想玩的 看到就会买了...

越晚买越便宜实在是非常奇怪的销售手法 通常都马是要越晚买

至于垃圾GAME,因为没在逛也就没去碰过

更多是有兴趣就丢愿望清单 放到特价都不一定买的

越贵 反著干有够奇怪

游戏第一波买气过去后,就是折价会让一些觉得便宜点才想买

早买早享受晚买享折扣啊

毕竟吸引力不够就是等降价，很吸引人当然直接冲干么等

改成500美金搞不好也差不多八成

像UBI~要我冲首发?你开玩笑逆?但他们也不是什么都烂所以便宜些我是愿意买来玩

5000镁应该也是极少数吧XD

有些游戏DLC一大堆,等折价一起买价格实在差很多

那你第一波就直接特价不就好了?

你是菜鸟哦 一堆游戏一发售就先折10%的

有人就比较有钱啊，先赚那些人的

通常都是预售折价就是了

不是说一堆游戏都越晚买越便宜?

还有像边缘禁地3有自知之明的,回STEAM直接先打对折

对呀 因为之后的打折就不只10%了呀！

怎么不看steam平台的稳定性与多元受众各种类型的游戏都能找到爱好者放久了营收自然有

所以游戏一般最贵时就是发售折扣结束后那段时间呀

那就为何不一开始就减价那么多呀...

想像一下，用RPG制作大师做一个月的游戏能赚到5000美薛海好吗

拜托 一堆商品也都是放久了就开始打折 又不只游戏

定价策略问题

来统计一下有多少人买蛋黄人生

预售特价是为了先冲动消费拐一波（让人连评价都没的参考就

而且你应该要说的是为什么售价不定低点吧 XD

买下去），之后卖原价就是为了再赚急着玩的人一笔啊

steam感觉只有城市天空线，世纪帝国2比较好，前者是3D的模拟城市（要有一定规模的电脑才跑的动），后者是过了2x年还屹立不摇的2D策略游戏

G胖厉害的就是市场策略跟玩家心理的掌握

有些游戏就算给你限时免费下载也做不起来

STEAM：亲爱的用户您好，今天又有游戏跳楼特卖了

而且折多少要不要参加活动也是厂商自己决定,你够硬颈

别说了，Steam一堆限免但连领都不想领的游戏也是XD

也可以像光荣一样,林北价格就是这么硬,折?折你老木

先等打折 反正游戏库里还堆那么多游戏没玩

Steam上也有永不特价的经典游戏呀

一堆粪game是要卖什么

50% 75%都可以 有时候看朋友实况主在玩被烧到就冲

日厂真的价格有够硬的，梦幻模拟战1+2重制居然要卖1988

就算价格再硬，只要能证明你的游戏能值这个钱，还是一堆人抢著买

毕竟一千八的首发风险实在太大，像这次恶灵古堡3重制我就很后悔，大概五个小时破完，另一个模式又一直配不到人，一千八真的买的很呕

是蛮贵的,RE3我也是首发,但因为以前我是买SS,没玩过3代所以我是还好啦,算是弥补遗憾

废话 一堆预览图看了就不想玩的游戏

合理啊 大部分人还是只买话题性够的游戏 很多独立制作的根本没人要买

steam不能卖二手啊，像RE3要我花1800买我才不要如果1800入手，可以玩完1400脱手，绝对能吸引更多玩家

屁啦 这样谁还要买 全都等二手啊==

有些ea的内容根本像半成品

实体片就能这样操作啊，玩新游戏才几百块还不用等特价收二手再卖甚至只要花运费，游戏本体根本不用钱

想第一时间的人就会买新片，可以等的人就会多等几天买二手，不可能所有人都能多等那几天所以新片不会没人买

一堆比大学生专题还烂的

长期特价就不是特价了，那只是把定价定比较低

东西过季打折很正常吧，会原价买的都冲完了，再来要吸引有点兴趣但不是很高的潜在客人

越晚买好奇心越低，因为网络上一堆心得、攻略跟弃坑的玩家

一堆粪game

这就像YTer觉得他们耍的猴戏很有价值一样 -.-事实上如果要付钱，我才不要看你的表演只不过是第四台附加上去的频道而已还以为有拍就有钱

粪game真的多

正常,一天快30款游戏上架,有可能款款精品吗?

发售就折价的是要搞冲榜效应 大作几乎没在跟你折价的好吗