After growing rapidly over the past two years, the Steam market is now facing a recession. Analysts expect a slight decline in games revenues on the platform in 2022 due to a number of macroeconomic factors.
- According to a recent VG Insights report, Steam games market revenue reached $3.1 billion in the first half of 2022 (including the platform’s fees, but excluding IAPs). This is up 3% year-over-year.
- However, sales have started to fall below 2021 levels in April, which indicates that Steam might show no growth in total gaming revenue or even fall slightly below last year’s $6.6 billion.
- For comparison, Steam games revenue increased by 31% and 11% in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Overall, game sales on the platform have grown by 74% in the last three years.
- The boost happened due to the pandemic, next-gen consoles’ supply issues, and the record number of new releases (a total of 11.7k new titles launched on Steam last year).
- However, Steam’s growth has slowed down this year. VG Insights cites five key reasons for the expected recession: the return of pre-COVID consumer habits; a decline in people’s income; the loss of games revenue from Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine; game launch delays; increased supply of new consoles.
- Analysts expect Steam to start growing again in 2023, but at reduced rates.
The full report can be found here.