A few days before the New Year, Valve decided to tell us which games were the most successful on Steam in 2020.
In total, the digital store has prepared six collections.
Sales Leaders
Steam included 100 games in this list at once, which it divided into four categories depending on the amount of income: “Platinum”, “Gold”, “Silver” and “Bronze”.
Not only game sales were taken into account, but also revenue from DLC and in-game purchases. But the store did not give specific figures, and the titles themselves were placed in categories at all in random order.
In addition to GTA V, Dota 2 and CS:GO, which have been among the top sellers for five years in a row, also included this year’s warmly received Fall Guys and Among Us. Cyberpunk 2077, whose release was less than a month ago, also managed to be among the highest-grossing games.
The best novelties
Here Steam did not break the nomination into four categories, but immediately compiled the top 25 most profitable new products.
Valve considered such games to be those projects that earned the most in the first two weeks after their release. The store also made collections of revenue leaders for each month
The most profitable new products were released in October and March — four games at once. But in May, none of the fresh games could earn enough to get into the top 25.
Sales Leaders in Virtual Reality
Steam also revealed the 12 best VR exclusives.
As with the overall top sales, this selection is divided into four categories by income.
The “platinum” block is expected to include Half-Life: Alyx, Beat Saber and Boneworks. But the sensational Phasmophobia is not listed in any of the categories. This is probably due to the fact that the title cannot be called a pure VR project, besides it is still in early access.
The best games released from Early Access
This list includes only those games that came out of early access in 2020.
At the same time, their revenue was counted both before and after the official release.
Steam has contributed a lot of indie projects here. Among other things, Hades, Factorio and Noita were noted in the selection of the best.
The most popular games
The top is formed from games with the maximum number of simultaneous players.
Moreover, Steam tried to choose titles where there was a stable large audience all year. To do this, the store excluded from the selection of games with short-term jumps in popularity due to giveaways or free weekends.
The “platinum” category includes games with an online presence of over 200 thousand people. According to Valve, there has never been such a large number of simultaneous players in store products before. For comparison, in 2019, for “platinum” online games had to exceed only 100 thousand people.
The best controller-enabled games
This nomination appeared only in 2020.
It takes into account the 100 games that have collected the largest number of unique players with controllers in the game for the day.
The most popular titles without surprises were already quite well-known projects. For example, GTA V, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Hades and FIFA 21.