2016 has been a hellscape. Everywhere. Even for those managing online video game marketplaces.
Pub trivia and business development resource Steam Spy posted this chart earlier today, breaking down Steam’s catalogue by each game’s year of release.
In 2012, for example, 379 games were released on Steam. In 2016, that number has leapt to 4207.
For reference, third-party games first appeared on the service in 2005. You’d expect that the chart would skew more heavily towards recent years, since there are way more independent titles released these days via Greenlight and Early Access, but even then, this is nuts.
Why the glut? As we’ve explained previously, and as you’ve probably guessed both by looking at this chart and attempting to navigate Steam’s new release section, Valve has pretty much given up on any attempt at controlling what gets on Steam. The service has also become something of a gold rush for developers.
In an attempt to manage the effects of this flood (rather than the flood itself), Valve has recently introduced concepts like Steam Curators, and more importantly has redesigned Steam’s store page to help users filter out the garbage. Which, if you ever dare not use, will leave you with a new releases chart that looks like this:
Or this:
Oh, and in case you were wondering, these figures only include games. Stuff like DLC, movies and other types of software were excluded from Steam Spy’s numbers.