泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 4)

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 4)

 

In January 2017, Steam graded on 100 top games released in 2016 regardless of their sales rank. The highest selling 12 games were classified as 'Platinum games'. It included The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Rocket League, Fallout 4, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, XCOM 2, No Man's Sky, Total War: Warhammer, Tom Clancy's The Division, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Grand Theft Auto V, Dark Souls III, and Dota 2. In particular, the achievement of Rocket League—the only Platinum-tiered indie game—was exceptional. The other independent games such as Stardew Valley, Subnautica, and Astroneer were landed on the top 100 best games. The four smaller-developer-made games on the chart show that the PC gaming platform seems to be in favor of indie games so far.

 

Compared 2015 top-sales ranking list by Steam Spy to the 2016 data, more than a few games are still loved by subscribers in 2016. Also, one can know that upper-ranked games generate significant revenue. The highest-placed games are especially bringing in from between 10 billion won to 200 billion won a year.

 

The top 5 sales list in 2015 is as follows.

 

No.1 Grand Theft Auto V : $161,253,971

No.2 Fallout 4 : $122,571,232

No.3 Metal Gear Solid V : $41,252,772

No.4 Counter Strike : Global Offensive : $40,929,890

No.5 The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt : $38,911,116

 

South Korean games have never been reached high on the annual Steam sales revenue, however, local games such as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), Black Desert Online, and Knight Online, etc. are expected to move up the chart in 2017 for the first time.

 

When it comes to the genre of computer games, PC gamers, who usually sit for long periods, become less biased than mobile gamers because of their environmental characteristics and difference of interfaces. Therefore there are various types of games including First-person shooter (FPS), Real-time strategy (RTS), and role-playing game (RPG), etc. being ranked in the top range.

 

Steam has seen steady sales increases, given many indie game makers a chance to grow, and proved that various genres of games can coexist together in the platform. Next time, I'd like to talk about the future of the video game digital distribution service and what a developer needs to launch its game on Steam.

 

 

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

(http://www.khgames.co.kr)

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui