Just like every year, Valve is out with its gaming growth report of Steam 2020 Year in Review and inside it, we have found some surprising numbers -especially related to PC gaming as the playtime increased by 50% as compared to the last year. Furthermore, every month almost 2.6 million people brought one of their favorite games on Steam for the first time as well.
As 2020 was full of stress and disappointments, a lot of people relied on gaming to escape reality which was pretty much getting disastrous with every passing day. Going by the statistics, it is reported that over half of the Americans were busy playing games throughout the pandemic year and that is exactly the reason why Steam’s numbers show that PC gaming is thriving to new heights.
It’s important to note here that Steam’s report only includes numbers related to PC and hence, it doesn’t include figures related to more popular games like Fortnite because of its availability on rival PC stores.
Along with extra time spent and the number of newcomers joining the platform, the report also showcases the fact that there was an increase of 21.4 percent in the number of games sold through the platform and there were almost 24.8 million people playing games at one time - which is a new record that was achieved for the second time in the year 2020.
Much of the credit for these immense numbers also goes to the developers who took advantage of the opportunity and introduced games like Valve’s own Half-Life: Alyx. The gaming community is already hoping that the game would finally give a much-needed boost to VR gaming in the upcoming year.
The demand for VR also grew as 1.7 million people started using Steam’s VR interface for the first time mostly because of the new headsets that received great reviews like the Oculus Quest 2.
Valve has also reported that there was a 71 percent increase in VR sales, with Alyx being on top because of 39 percent sales belonging to it. The VR playtime also went up by 30 percent.
Moreover, PC games were finally being played without the need of a mouse and keyboard connected to a Windows machine as Valve noted a 66.6 percent increase in game sessions being carried out with the help of a controller.
Read next: Blockchain and the era of gaming
As 2020 was full of stress and disappointments, a lot of people relied on gaming to escape reality which was pretty much getting disastrous with every passing day. Going by the statistics, it is reported that over half of the Americans were busy playing games throughout the pandemic year and that is exactly the reason why Steam’s numbers show that PC gaming is thriving to new heights.
It’s important to note here that Steam’s report only includes numbers related to PC and hence, it doesn’t include figures related to more popular games like Fortnite because of its availability on rival PC stores.
Along with extra time spent and the number of newcomers joining the platform, the report also showcases the fact that there was an increase of 21.4 percent in the number of games sold through the platform and there were almost 24.8 million people playing games at one time - which is a new record that was achieved for the second time in the year 2020.
Much of the credit for these immense numbers also goes to the developers who took advantage of the opportunity and introduced games like Valve’s own Half-Life: Alyx. The gaming community is already hoping that the game would finally give a much-needed boost to VR gaming in the upcoming year.
The demand for VR also grew as 1.7 million people started using Steam’s VR interface for the first time mostly because of the new headsets that received great reviews like the Oculus Quest 2.
Valve has also reported that there was a 71 percent increase in VR sales, with Alyx being on top because of 39 percent sales belonging to it. The VR playtime also went up by 30 percent.
Moreover, PC games were finally being played without the need of a mouse and keyboard connected to a Windows machine as Valve noted a 66.6 percent increase in game sessions being carried out with the help of a controller.
Read next: Blockchain and the era of gaming
