Steam Games in a Nutshell: The Early Years to Present

Best Steam Games and Demographics

Steam games are online games that can be downloaded, bought and updated by online gamers easily. Steam, the largest and popular digital distribution platform developed by Valve Corporation provides users access to buy, install and update their downloaded games, provide features like groups, community, view friends’ lists, social networking, cloud saving and voice and chat functions in games.

WHO IS PLAYING?

As technology developed with access to faster internet speed, steam games have evolved greatly in a span of fourteen years from a simple portal for Counter-Strike 1.6 to a hub for socialization, merchandise marketing and even participation in the game development. From November 2012 to January 2018, Statista showed that in January 2018, Steam had 18.5 simultaneous million users during peak time.

Steam Users from November 2012 to January 2018

In 2015 , The Entertainment Software Association conducted a Sales, Demographic and Usage Data in the USA and found out that the three types of video games that most gamers most often play are Social Games (31%), Action (30%) and Puzzle/Board Game/Card Game/Game Shows (30%). There are more male (56%) game players compared to females (44%). However, 18 years old and older women (33%) have the more significant game-playing population compared to males with an age range of 18 years old and younger (15%).

The mentioned statistics proved the vast popularity of steam games around the globe that the number of games released on the platform in 2017 could have been around 5,000 surpassing the number of games between 2006 to 2014.

Number of Games Released on Steam Each Year!

As of February 12, 2018, Valve Corporation identified the top five most played game on steam are Player Unknown’s Battleground (1,388,591 players), DOTA 2 (333,739 users), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (178,763 users), Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (53,639 users) and Warfare (46,636 users).

With the growing number of popular online games, users have a varied opinion for the best game. Criteria may vary from the quality of graphics, character art style, voice. Other criteria are the plot, ease in-game modification and story transition and the level of difficulty to name a few.  Given the mentioned gauge, Techradarlisted in 2017 the best steam games, a mixture of classic and recent games.

Top Steam Games list by TechRadar are :

• Resident Evil 7:
• Biohazard;
• Sid Meier’s Civilization VI;
• Undertale; Counter-Strike: Global Offensive;
• XCOM 2;
• The Witcher 3: wild Hunt;
• Inside; Rocket League;
• Portal 2; H1Z1: King of the Hill.

 

With the development of game technology, access to better internet connection. Gamers are offered a feast of different game selections and options assuring avid game fans the best steam games this 2018 and beyond.

————————————–

Written by: Mae Mosette O. Quirante / February 2018