Global PC Games Market Report 2024 (Sensor Tower)

Summary

• The Steam market generated $9.0bn in full game revenue in 2023, with 580M games sold, about 14,000 games released and 33.6M peak players online.p.4
• Steam full game revenue grew +17.8% in 2023 to $9.0bn, the first significant year of growth since the post-Covid normalisation.p.5
• The market is winner-takes-all: the top 10 games released in 2023 made up 61% of full game revenue.p.4
• The top 100 released games accounted for 91% of total revenue, while the remaining 13,871 games contributed just 9%.p.15
• 930 games made over $1M in revenue, 157 made over $10M and 20 made over $50M.p.9
• Steam full game revenue is forecast to reach $11.5bn by 2028, a CAGR of +5.0%, after a challenging 2024.p.11
• Only 6 of the 24 top games in 2023 had microtransactions, as premium story-focused games dominated.p.21

Key insights

1. 2023 was a stand-out year for RPGs on Steam, led by Baldur's Gate 3.p.4
2. 7 of the top 10 releases by units also appear in the top 10 by full game revenue.p.6
3. Only 309 of the new releases were free to play games.p.9
4. Only 5% of new releases made over $100k in full game revenue.p.9
5. Top 10 games by revenue in 2023 were led by Baldur's Gate 3 at $657M and Hogwarts Legacy at $341M.p.17
6. Games such as EA Sports FC 24 were discounted by -50% during their first discount since launch.p.20