Steam saw a large increase in its number of users as well as their activities following the COVID-19 pandemic, a surprising boom but which is still gaining traction for the digital games distribution platform.
According to an annual year-in-review from earlier today, Steam continued to see “unprecedented growth” in 2021 with 27 percent more players spending on games compared to 2020. That growth is larger than the 38 billion hours of playtime recorded in 2021 which increased by 21 percent from 2020.
Valve noted that 2.6 million first-time purchasers were recorded on average on Steam every single month of 2021, amounting to 31.2 million by the end of the year. That first-time purchaser growth is interestingly estimated to be almost the same as witnessed in 2020.
The surge in player spending can be attributed to several factors, particularly including the large library of acclaimed games that were released in 2021. Steam users just had more options to spend on and for first-timers, it was a chance to further embrace the offerings of the digital platform.
More than 10,000 games were reportedly released on Steam in 2021. Some of the notable releases include the likes of It Takes Two, Resident Evil Village, Psychonauts 2, Little Nightmares 2, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Tales from the Borderlands, Days Gone, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Bright Memory: Infinite, Hitman 3, New World, Deathloop, Far Cry 6, Halo Infinite, The Medium, Nioh 2, Outriders, Biomutant, Forza Horizon 5, and so many more.
Valve also confirmed that there were 132 million monthly active players on Steam in 2021, which comes down to 69 million daily active players last year.
Elsewhere, Valve rolled out the first wave of Steam Decks a couple of weeks back. Valve CEO Gabe Newell himself hand-delivered some of the handhelds to their respective owners as part of a marketing campaign, even giving away some free units in the process.
