Over 14,500 games launched on Steam in 2023, breaking records for the fourth year in a row

A shot from SteamDB's "Steam Game Release Summary by Year" page.
A shot from SteamDB's "Steam Game Release Summary by Year" page. (Image credit: SteamDB)

Over 14,500 games made their way to Valve's Steam platform in 2023, according to a quick look at SteamDB'. This continues a four-year streak of Steam breaking its record each year, though releases in general have ballooned dramatically in the past ten years as Valve loosened Steam publishing requirements with what eventually became Steam Direct.

Now, make no mistake: we can't guarantee that even a majority of these games are actually worth your money or your time. However, there's a bit more to this giant number of PC Steam releases than meets the eye, and we can actually dig into that deeper meat ourselves by taking a closer look at Valve's official Best of 2023 page— particularly the "New Releases" tab, since "Top Sellers" includes games released in past years that are still successful today.

A shot from the Best of Steam 2023 page, with Top New Releases by Gross Revenue revealing Payday 3, Cities: Skylines II, and Sons of the Forest as the three most successful 2023 Steam releases.

A shot from the Best of Steam 2023 page, with Top New Releases by Gross Revenue revealing Payday 3, Cities: Skylines II, and Sons of the Forest as the three most successful 2023 Steam releases. (Image credit: Valve)

According to the FAQ included by Valve at the bottom of this page, a total of 100 games are included in each category, divided into 4 tiers. These tiers are Bronze for the lower 51 games, Silver for 50th up to 25th place, Gold for 24th through 13th place, and finally Platinum for the Top 12. The sales data used for creating these tiers is from January 1st of 2023 to December 15th of 2023.

Dominating the Platinum category is co-op heist shooter Payday 3, city sim Cities: Skylines II, and solo-or-co-op horror title Sons of the Forest. A number of other prominent AAA and AA games also pepper the Top 12, like the mech-combat RPG Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, 2D fighter Street Fighter 6, and fan-favorite DnD-styled RPG Baldur's Gate.

Surprisingly, some games with notoriously bad PC performance still managed to make their way high onto Steam's best-selling games of 2023. Star Wars: Jedi Survivor suffers from notoriously awful PC performance issues despite its otherwise stellar production value, and it seems like sheer brand recognition has still managed to carry it right into Steam's Top 12 New Releases of 2023.

That said, any game that managed to make it onto Steam's Best Of 2023 page (based primarily on sales data) achieved something of an impressive feat when it had to outsell 14 thousand other games to do it.

Christopher Harper
Contributing Writer

Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.

  • Kamen Rider Blade
    Steam really needs a dedicated team to label games that are truly #ShovelWare | #Garbage
    Reply
  • bigdragon
    This is great news! Valve has done a lot in fostering an ecosystem for a variety of games. I didn't buy a single AAA game in 2023 -- unless you consider Larian to be AAA. Every game I played came from a smaller team or individual with fresh ideas, new spins on old concepts, or genuinely entertaining experiences.

    There is a lot of crap and asset flips on Steam, yes. I haven't had any issue sorting out good games from the junk though. I suppose having a large and varied friend circle helps with finding the good games. Someone who finds a good game tends to tell everyone else about it.
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    Kamen Rider Blade said:
    Steam really needs a dedicated team to label games that are truly #ShovelWare | #Garbage
    Aww come on, they aint all bad...

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources_Soviet_Republic/https://store.steampowered.com/app/2559270/Gym_Simulator_24/https://store.steampowered.com/app/2710950/Revenge_Of_The_Colon/https://store.steampowered.com/app/2553050/Estate_Agent_Simulator/
    Reply
  • Delerium76
    bigdragon said:
    This is great news! Valve has done a lot in fostering an ecosystem for a variety of games. I didn't buy a single AAA game in 2023 -- unless you consider Larian to be AAA. Every game I played came from a smaller team or individual with fresh ideas, new spins on old concepts, or genuinely entertaining experiences.

    There is a lot of crap and asset flips on Steam, yes. I haven't had any issue sorting out good games from the junk though. I suppose having a large and varied friend circle helps with finding the good games. Someone who finds a good game tends to tell everyone else about it.
    Considering the recent "The Day Before" scandal, I'd say that lots of people still get duped by scams/asset flips. It's still an issue on steam
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    peachpuff said:
    Aww come on, they aint all bad...

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources_Soviet_Republic/https://store.steampowered.com/app/2559270/Gym_Simulator_24/https://store.steampowered.com/app/2710950/Revenge_Of_The_Colon/https://store.steampowered.com/app/2553050/Estate_Agent_Simulator/
    That's not very convincing.
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    Kamen Rider Blade said:
    That's not very convincing.
    In what way? That its shovelware or good stuff?
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    peachpuff said:
    In what way? That its shovelware or good stuff?
    That it's good stuff worth looking at and isn't shovel ware or a asset flip.
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    Kamen Rider Blade said:
    That it's good stuff worth looking at and isn't shovel ware or a asset flip.
    Oh come on you thought i was serious? :LOL:
    Reply
  • TheOtherOne
    Reply