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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這數據說真的完全不讓人意外。
這只是再次證明了以前有人討論過的幾個論點。
一、Steam的主要收入來自3A級大作的抽成，其它的能給Steam的收益不高。
二、遊戲業的競爭越來越激烈，而Steam能給於的幫助也很有限。遊戲數量越來越多，不可
能每個都能被玩家注意到，Steam的廣告位也就那些。
另外這新聞其實也忽視了一件事。
那就是Steam上其實不少低成本的簡單遊戲，這些遊戲能賣到五千美金都能回本了。

一堆糞G能賣出去就不錯惹

垃圾Game一大堆能賺到就該偷哭了

一大堆糞GAME能賣出去就不錯了

一堆糞Game是要賣什麼啦

不得不說還真的有七八成看起來都很像糞game

就一堆垃圾Game啊

一堆只有圖片的垃圾

特價機制也是個原因吧 steam基本上越晚買越便宜 所以除了少數3A大作會有夠多預約以外 通常會觀望一陣子 風評夠好又特價了才會買

翻譯 STEAM上面越來越多騙錢垃圾遊戲

這樣說也不對 有很多遊戲是那種沒特價根本不想買的

0~5000

EA的不知道算不算在內，算在內那也蠻正常的因為很多就是出來試水溫，籌資繼續磨

小遊戲看的是長尾效應，這才是成功的點

開始賣錢就是發售了呀 XD

選擇太多 不是特別有吸引力的就等免費特價

我是沒逛小遊戲的習慣,通常會買的小遊戲都是網路上看到實況覺得好像不錯,直接去搜尋

一堆連介紹讓人看不下去的糞game，這數字很正常

像我真的想玩的 看到就會買了...

越晚買越便宜實在是非常奇怪的銷售手法 通常都馬是要越晚買

至於垃圾GAME,因為沒在逛也就沒去碰過

更多是有興趣就丟願望清單 放到特價都不一定買的

越貴 反著幹有夠奇怪

遊戲第一波買氣過去後,就是折價會讓一些覺得便宜點才想買

早買早享受晚買享折扣啊

畢竟吸引力不夠就是等降價，很吸引人當然直接衝幹麼等

改成500美金搞不好也差不多八成

像UBI~要我衝首發?你開玩笑逆?但他們也不是甚麼都爛所以便宜些我是願意買來玩

5000鎂應該也是極少數吧XD

有些遊戲DLC一大堆,等折價一起買價格實在差很多

那你第一波就直接特價不就好了?

你是菜鳥哦 一堆遊戲一發售就先折10%的

有人就比較有錢啊，先賺那些人的

通常都是預售折價就是了

不是說一堆遊戲都越晚買越便宜?

還有像邊緣禁地3有自知之明的,回STEAM直接先打對折

對呀 因為之後的打折就不只10%了呀！

怎麼不看steam平台的穩定性與多元受眾各種類型的遊戲都能找到愛好者放久了營收自然有

所以遊戲一般最貴時就是發售折扣結束後那段時間呀

那就為何不一開始就減價那麼多呀...

想像一下，用RPG製作大師做一個月的遊戲能賺到5000美薛海好嗎

拜託 一堆商品也都是放久了就開始打折 又不只遊戲

定價策略問題

來統計一下有多少人買蛋黃人生

預售特價是為了先衝動消費拐一波（讓人連評價都沒的參考就

而且你應該要說的是為什麼售價不定低點吧 XD

買下去），之後賣原價就是為了再賺急著玩的人一筆啊

steam感覺只有城市天空線，世紀帝國2比較好，前者是3D的模擬城市（要有一定規模的電腦才跑的動），後者是過了2x年還屹立不搖的2D策略遊戲

G胖厲害的就是市場策略跟玩家心理的掌握

有些遊戲就算給你限時免費下載也做不起來

STEAM：親愛的用戶您好，今天又有遊戲跳樓特賣了

而且折多少要不要參加活動也是廠商自己決定,你夠硬頸

別說了，Steam一堆限免但連領都不想領的遊戲也是XD

也可以像光榮一樣,林北價格就是這麼硬,折?折你老木

先等打折 反正遊戲庫裡還堆那麼多遊戲沒玩

Steam上也有永不特價的經典遊戲呀

一堆糞game是要賣什麼

50% 75%都可以 有時候看朋友實況主在玩被燒到就衝

日廠真的價格有夠硬的，夢幻模擬戰1+2重製居然要賣1988

就算價格再硬，只要能證明你的遊戲能值這個錢，還是一堆人搶著買

畢竟一千八的首發風險實在太大，像這次惡靈古堡3重製我就很後悔，大概五個小時破完，另一個模式又一直配不到人，一千八真的買的很嘔

是蠻貴的,RE3我也是首發,但因為以前我是買SS,沒玩過3代所以我是還好啦,算是彌補遺憾

廢話 一堆預覽圖看了就不想玩的遊戲

合理啊 大部分人還是只買話題性夠的遊戲 很多獨立製作的根本沒人要買

steam不能賣二手啊，像RE3要我花1800買我才不要如果1800入手，可以玩完1400脫手，絕對能吸引更多玩家

屁啦 這樣誰還要買 全都等二手啊==

有些ea的內容根本像半成品

實體片就能這樣操作啊，玩新遊戲才幾百塊還不用等特價收二手再賣甚至只要花運費，遊戲本體根本不用錢

想第一時間的人就會買新片，可以等的人就會多等幾天買二手，不可能所有人都能多等那幾天所以新片不會沒人買

一堆比大學生專題還爛的

長期特價就不是特價了，那只是把定價定比較低

東西過季打折很正常吧，會原價買的都衝完了，再來要吸引有點興趣但不是很高的潛在客人

越晚買好奇心越低，因為網路上一堆心得、攻略跟棄坑的玩家

一堆糞game

這就像YTer覺得他們耍的猴戲很有價值一樣 -.-事實上如果要付錢，我才不要看你的表演只不過是第四台附加上去的頻道而已還以為有拍就有錢

糞game真的多

正常,一天快30款遊戲上架,有可能款款精品嗎?

發售就折價的是要搞衝榜效應 大作幾乎沒在跟你折價的好嗎