Record number of games released on Steam in just five months

19 May 2014

It has been a record year for the gaming platform Steam after figures show more games have been released in the first five months of 2014 than 2013 entirely.

The gaming platform run by Valve is by far one of the most popular for PC gamers, so much so, that a recent report found that PC gamers download games from the company and yet don’t play about 37pc of them.

According to Gamasutra, the surge in the number of games appearing on Steam is in no small part down to its Greenlight process, whereby indie game developers put forward their games for publication. Valve has become renowned for aiding smaller developers in a sector that, prior to Steam, was largely made up of the major game publishers.

According to figures, just fewer than 200 games have been released on Steam so far this year, while in comparison, less than 50 became available in both 2013 and 2012.

While the Greenlight project has been considerably successful so far, Steam has reiterated it actually is looking to wind down the project entirely and introduce a system whereby Steam will become an open platform whereby developers can post their games on the platform without the need for Steam to give the go-ahead for each title.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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