Valve, the company behind digital storefront behemoth Steam, has released its “Best of 2017” list, and it covers a lot of ground. While people usually lists their top games of the year, Valve did that a few hundred steps better by listing the Steam top selling games of 2017, best new releases, most played and more.
Without further ado, check out the big end-of-year Steam recap!
Top Sellers:
We started by looking at the top-sellers again. We ran the numbers to come up with the list of the games that earned the most revenue during 2017, including all forms of Steam revenue; game sales, in-game transactions, and DLC. So, like last year, the resulting list includes a mix of free-to-play games as well as premium games.
Platinum:
- Ghost Recon Wildlands
- Warframe
- Dota 2
- Divinity Original Sin II
- H1Z1
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Rocket League
- Rainbow Six Siege
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
- ARK: Survival Evolved
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Check out the full list of top sellers from bronze to platinum, right here.
Top New Releases:
We thought that it might also be interesting to look at the top-selling games that released during 2017. This one was a bit trickier to put together in a way that fairly represented games released throughout the year. For example, if we just looked at total revenue earned by games released during the year, the list would strongly favor games released early in the year, as they have had more months to earn sales. To counter that effect, we could look at the average money-per-day earned by games released in 2017, but that ends up biasing strongly in favor of games released late in the year, as initial launch-week sales spikes are typically much stronger than following weeks and months.
Ultimately, we weren’t happy with any single metric as determination of the popular releases throughout the year, so we used the games from all of these lists and split them out by the month they released. The result is a list of games released each month during 2017 that achieved a sizable level of commercial success. Top games released in January are based more on their overall gross revenue while games released later in the year are selected more based on initial week sales and average daily revenue.
Full month by month list of top releases right here.
Note: any of the measures above for new releases will under-count free-to-play games, which tend to grow in revenue over time rather than having an initial sales spike like premium games.).
Best Selling VR Titles:
We have seen over 1,000 new VR titles come out this year, including blockbusters such as Fallout 4 VR, SUPERHOT VR, and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, as well as continued popularity of last year’s releases like Arizona Sunshine, RAW DATA, and Job Simulator. As VR continues to grow as a platform unto itself, we wanted to put together a list of this year’s top-selling VR games to highlight the variety of interesting VR experiences that are being bought and played.
Platinum:
- Space Pirate Trainer
- Gorn
- Onward
- Fallout 4 VR
- Raw Data
- Audioshield
- Tilt Brush by Google
- Superhot VR
- Arizone Sunshine
- Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality
- Hot Dogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades
- Job Simulator
Check out the best selling VR titles from bronze to platinum here.
Top Early Access Grads:
The number of notable titles launching through the Early Access program continued to expand in 2017 with titles like PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS, Oxygen Not Included, Northgard, Dead Cells, and Blackwake. Meanwhile, we’ve seen a number of hugely popular Early Access games make the transition to full release (hello, PUBG!). So, we decided to make a list of all the top-selling games that graduated from Early Access this year.
Platinum:
- Portal Knights
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
- Torment: Tides of Numeria
- Battlerite
- Slime Rancher
- Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator
- Day of Infamy
- The Long Dark
- Divinity Original Sin II
- Everspace
- ARK: Survival Evolved
- Endless Space 2
Check out the top early access grads from bronze to platinum here.
Top Played Games:
Finally, we wanted to see what people were spending time playing, and how that compared with the games that players were spending money on. So we put together a list of games based on the peak number of simultaneous players. We originally set out to create a top-100 list, but found a slightly longer list (107) that achieved a peak number of simultaneous players over 15,000 and felt it was worth recognizing them all. To fully recognize the games that have built a significant player base, we’ve excluded a few titles that only had short-term spikes in player count due to running giveaways.
In the process of putting this list together, we found that there is a lot of overlap in the lists of top-selling games and top-played games, with 71 titles on both lists.
Over 100,000 Simultaneous Players:
- H1z1
- Dota 2
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- Rainbow Six Siege
- Warfame
- ARK: Survival Evolved
- Grand Theft Auto V
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
- Payday 2
Check out the complete list of most played from 15,000 simultaneous players to 100,000 here.
Specific revenue for the lists are not disclosed, but the leading sellers are broken into the following four categories to give an idea of how they placed:
– Platinum: The first thru 12th best seller
– Gold: 13th – 24th best seller
– Silver: 25th – 40th top seller
– Bronze: 41st – 100th top seller
According to Valve, the winners of the second annual Steam Awards will be revealed later this week. You can still vote on some of the categories right here.
Surprised by any of the games on the list? For me, I’m surprised Payday 2 is there, and even Ghost Recon Wildlands. Games I expected to rule the roost in almost category didn’t disappoint (PUBG), and yeah, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V is a zombie game that will never die, no?
Share your own top lists of 2017 in the comments below, and whether you agree with Steam’s community.
Source: Steam