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The world of video game development is seeing more and more examples of commercial success. In 2025 alone, almost 6 thousand games released on Steam managed to earn more than $100 thousand. At the same time, the service set a new record for the number of simultaneously active users, exceeding 42 million. Valve announced this during its presentation at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Speaking to journalists and developers on the sidelines of the conference, Valve representative Tom Giardino noted that in 2025, 5863 games released on Steam managed to cross the $100 thousand revenue mark. For comparison, at the peak of the pandemic in 2020, when a significant number of people spent more time at home playing video games and online entertainment, there were about 3 thousand such projects.
Giardino emphasized that the $100 thousand figure itself can have different meanings depending on the scale of the developer. For a large AAA project, this amount can be almost invisible in the overall budget, while for an independent author or a small studio, it can mean a serious financial reward. Nevertheless, he said, “many more games” are reaching high revenue levels on Steam today than it was a few years ago.
According to the company representative, similar dynamics are observed at other financial levels. The number of projects that annually earn more than $500 thousand or even exceed the $1 million mark has also increased significantly compared to the early years of the platform’s existence. At the same time, Giardino did not specify which games are included in these statistics and how long it took them to achieve such results.
Valve also shared new indicators of Steam user activity. At the beginning of 2026, the service set a historical record when the number of simultaneously active users reached 42 million. At the same time, Giardino explained that this indicator reflects only the number of people running the Steam client on their computers, even if they are not currently browsing the store, making purchases, or downloading content.
Another important indicator relates directly to activity within games. Recently, the number of simultaneous players in projects on the platform has set a new high and reached 13.9 million. This is about twice as many as the record values of both total and game simultaneous activity, which were recorded only 5 years ago.
Giardino noted that such growth looks like a positive signal for developers. At the same time, he acknowledged that over time, the platform may face a problem of oversaturation due to the constant increase in the number of new releases.
Valve paid special attention to the Daily Deals campaign. In 2025, more than 1500 games were presented under this program. For 69% of them, it was the first appearance in the list of daily deals. The campaign showed significant interest from players: 8.2 million users purchased games through Daily Deals, which is 125% more than a year earlier.
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