In the new 2024 year-in-review report, Valve has released new figures. Particularly exciting: They wanted to know whether new Steam users would stay and found that newcomers from 2023 not only stayed but spent around 16,000 years there.
The title image is a collage.
What kind of report is this? In the 2024 year-in-review, Valve discusses the changes over the past year. Information about developer tools, player features, and data is shared.
For example, Valve writes that they tried to focus on more demos in 2024. These have been well received by players and provide the opportunity to test hardware compatibility, among other things.
At the end of the report, they revisit the figures from 2023: Valve wanted to know how many new players from 2023 remained and looked at their data. The result? Over 1.7 million new players have played for around 16,000 years.
By the way, the successor to Subnautica will soon be available on Steam:
Over 141 million game hours – That’s over 16,000 years
What other figures are there for 2023? In the report, Valve states that new releases attract a large number of first-time buyers. To find out if these first-time buyers remain loyal to the platform, they analyzed the 20 most successful launches of 2023.
Overall, these titles drew in 1.7 million new Steam players. Their activities were analyzed, focusing on the period from January 2024 to early March 2025:
In total, these players spent over 141 million hours on Steam. This amounts to approximately 16,000 years – combined. Additionally, they spent 73 million US dollars on new games and add-ons like DLCs. There were also 20 million US dollars spent on in-game transactions. Thus, the new Steam players from 2023 spent a total of 93 million US dollars on Steam during the analyzed period.
Valve concludes that their customer retention mechanisms are working well.
What else is in the report? Finally, Valve provides insights into the revenue growth of games on Steam. According to them, the revenue from new releases on the platform has increased tenfold since 2014. According to the displayed graphic (via Steam), they have seen steady growth. Only in 2023 was there a slight dip.
Overall, it seems that Steam is doing well, and Valve predicts further improvements. However, there are not only really good games on Steam that excite players with their demo and the final product. There are also real flops that are thoroughly torn apart by end users in reviews. We have here the 10 worst Steam games according to review score for you.
