Today Valve announced the 100 games that have brought in the most revenue on Steam in 2016. The list is quite varied, ranging from top dogs like Grand Theft Auto V and the company’s own Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to more granular games like Stellaris.
The is the first time that Valve has put together such an extensive list that ranks games according to their total gross revenue for the year. The games are sorted into one of four different tiers, with 1-12 labeled as “Platinum,” 13-24 labeled as “Gold,” 25-40 labeled as “Silver,” and the rest falling into the Bronze category.
While the ranking doesn’t provide any specifics on which games within a given category placed higher than one another, what the total revenue was for any particular game, or how much of that revenue was from in-game purchases vs. the initial sale, it’s still an interesting breakdown of what games people were willing to shell out the most money for.
For instance people are apparently still spending quite a lot of money on Fallout 4, one of the year’s “Platinum” games alongside The Witcher 3 and Total War: Warhammer. Meanwhile, games with buggy PC versions at release didn’t fair as well as one might have expected. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided didn’t break out of the “Silver” tier, and Dishonored 2 was stuck in “Bronze” along with the first game which came out back in 2012. And, in news that you can take however you want, No Man’s Sky did crack the top 12.
One more thing that’s worth noting is just how well free-to-play games seemed to do on Steam. Dota 2 and Warframe were both near the top of the list while Smite and War Thunder managed to still place in the middle of the pack, demonstrating that the pool of free-to-play revenue is big enough to sustain at least a handful of games in the Steam ecosystem.
The news comes on the back of yesterday’s 2016 Steam Awards announcement, and includes discounts as part of the end of the winter sale to help the games that have already made the most money in 2016 make a little more at the start of 2017.