Now that 2020 is no more, members of the gaming community from around the world have been ringing in the New Year in a variety of ways. On Steam, the amount of incoming users and games purchased increased exponentially throughout 2020. Coming into the first week of 2021, the stats for the highest-selling games on Steam are in.
To say that 2020 was a good year for Steam would be an understatement. Due to the major impact COVID-19 had on the world at large, more and more people turned to Steam as an entertainment outlet to keep themselves occupied during quarantine. This caused Steam to garner a huge amount of success and growth as a result.
However, it seems that same success has carried over into the New Year, as several popular titles continue to top the sales charts. Analyst Daniel Ahmad listed out the top-selling Steam games for the week of the New Year on Twitter, and at the top of the list was Cyberpunk 2077. In spite of all its technical issues, the game is supposedly at its most functional on PC, so in a way this makes sense.
In terms of sales, coming in at lower levels are also some familiar faces. Games like Sea of Thieves, Rust, Hades, and Phasmophobia continue to maintain their longevity and popularity on the platform. However, games that have been on the platform for several years like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Red Dead Redemption 2 still managed to break the top ten list for 2021.
The amount of success Steam has achieved within the last year is astounding. Within 2020 alone, the record for most concurrent online Steam users has been broken a number of times, with the most recent broken record occurring on New Year's Eve. The fact that all of these games have continued to succeed on the platform, especially some of the more older titles, is also impressive.
It will be interesting to see what the future holds for Steam in the coming months. With a COVID-19 vaccine close to releasing, it's possible that this newfound success the platform has achieved might start to decline. Then again, some of the more recent games to come out on the platform, such as Hades, have managed to maintain their popularity. Therefore, more and more people will likely look to Steam as a way to play all of these great games, particularly as new 2021 releases start to make the rounds.