Analytics: Three-quarters of game revenue on Steam comes from action and RPGs

The service GameDiscoverCo attempted to determine the real size of the Steam market (Total Addressable Market) and calculate the revenue of different game categories. They conducted an experiment by leaving only two key tags for each game that earned more than a million dollars — one for the genre and one for the subgenre.

• Action games are the highest-grossing genre on Steam, accounting for 58.37% of the platform’s total game revenue.
• Following are RPGs (17.11%), strategies (13.97%), simulators (9.76%), and sports games (1%).

• Arena shooters gathered the most revenue among action games, making up 18.99% of the genre’s revenue or $9.52 billion. The second subgenre in the top list is first-person shooters, with $6.67 billion in revenue.

• The most lucrative RPG subgenres are action RPGs (26.45% or $3.89 billion), MMORPGs ($3.69 billion), and CRPGs ($2.69 billion).

• In the strategy category, the leading subgenres are MOBA (19.23% or $2.31 billion), RTS ($1.84 billion), and grand strategy games ($1.16 billion).

• For simulators, the top-grossing subgenres are general simulators (44.57% or $3.74 billion), job simulators ($1.36 billion), and racing games ($942.89 million).

• Overall, the subgenres with the highest average revenue per game are arena shooters ($634.8 million), battle royales ($354.2 million), and hero shooters ($206.7 million). However, throughout Steam’s history, there have been only 29 games in these categories that have earned more than a million dollars. Almost all revenue comes from selected hits.

• Visual novels and roguelike deck builders are the subgenres with the lowest average revenue per game, earning $4.2 million and $3.4 million, respectively.