The number of games released on Steam this year has topped 6,000, according to analyst Daniel Ahmad, of Niko Partners. That's the most ever on the platform—around 1,500 more than last year and almost as many as the total number of games released between 2005 and 2015.
A couple of reasons spring to mind: first, the launch of Steam Direct in June, which accelerated the number of releases. It's the replacement for Steam Greenlight that lets developers publish on Steam without going through an approval process—all they have to do is pay $100. Clearly, it's not putting many people off.
The second is that it's simply easier to make games nowadays, even if you have no experience with development. Check out our list of best engines for beginners here.
A quick update to the number of games released on Steam chart. This is as of early November. Year isn't over yet and there have already been more than 6,000 games released on Steam this year. That's almost as many as the number of games released between 2005 and 2015. pic.twitter.com/RCIUJFprzGNovember 9, 2017
I wrote in September that the number of titles on Steam could hit 5,000 this year, now we're looking at more like 7,000. That's a lot of games and a lot of them are, admittedly, not very good.
Some people will argue that Steam is too open at the moment, and while you want to avoid talented would-be developers being priced out it should also be easy for users to log on without being bombarded with rubbish. I'm still not sure which side of the fence to come down on—I never feel like I have too much trouble finding what I want on Steam, or avoiding the bad eggs.
What's your view?
Thanks, gamesindustry.biz.
