Steam has released its Year In Review 2023 for everyone to see their gaming stats. The stats includes the top games you’ve spent hours in, the achievements you’ve unlocked your preference of either keyboard and mouse or controller controls and more.
Under all the personalised stats, there’s one intriguing statistic in the Steam Year In Review, in that it reveals the average player on Steam’s preference of playing new or old games.
According to Steam, the average player on Steam’s played games this year is 9% new games released in 2023, 52% are games released from 1-7 years ago (so games released in 2022 to 2016), and 38% are games released from 8 years ago and older. One percent is missing from that breakdown, likely due to the stats rounding off into whole numbers.
What the stats say is that a large number of players on Steam are playing older games, clearing their backlog or are just sticking to a comfortable game they know they enjoy, than they are buying all the latest game releases.
Steam’s rich history of deep discounts during sales may be contributing to this, as savvy players would rather wait than buy a game in the year of its release.