Opinion: the genres most represented on Steam have the lowest average income

While developers are making puzzles and platformers, Steam users are buying up 4X strategies. Game designer Chris Zukowski drew parallels between the number of games in the genre and its average income.

Crusader Kings
In mid-October, Zukowski conducted a traditional study of Steam genres for himself.

Among other things, he drew attention to the pattern between which games are most often sold by developers and publishers in the Valve store, and which ones are more often bought by players.

Here’s what he got:

Graph of the intersection of the number of games in the genre and the average genre income
In most cases, the highest income turned out to be those genres that are less on Steam.

For example, the most represented genre on the marketplace is puzzles (almost 4 thousand titles). On average, games of this genre earn $ 3.7 thousand. For comparison, games of the least common genre — 4X-strategy — on average receive $ 86.6 thousand.

However, there are exceptions. There are practically no match 3 games on Steam (249 titles), and their average earnings also remain low — $ 2.3 thousand.

Zukowski compares the graph with the supply and demand curve. In his opinion, it all looks like there is “an excess of platformers and puzzles in the Valve store, along with a great demand for strategies and role-playing games.”

Former game designer Simon Carless, in response to a colleague’s research, adds that there are a couple of important nuances here:

• on Steam, a title can have several different tags/genres;
• sometimes the tag may not describe the whole game, but only its element. For example, in a platformer there may be quests made in the spirit of a puzzle — the game in the store will have a puzzle genre, but it will not actually be one.

Also on the topic:

• Stricter rules in Steam China may lead to its unification with the global versionGameDataCrunch: how does a new website that collects and analyzes data about games work
• Steam algorithm: what factors directly affect its operation and game sales
• Is there any news?