Last year, a record 14,397 games were uploaded on Steam. We have not even reached the end of October and that record has already been broken. At the time of writing, 14,410 games have already been uploaded on the platform this year—and it is not cheery news for indie developers.
The data is based on the independent Steam analytics site SteamDB. The analytics site recently started segregating games uploaded on Steam into two categories namely “Games” and “Limited Games”.
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“Limited games have ‘Profile Features Limited’ flag,” explained the analytics platform. “Steam automatically enables profile customization features as games reach certain player and sales metrics that give confidence that a reasonable number of customers that are engaged with the game.”
Interestingly, the number of Limited Games uploaded on Steam has spiked since 2018, indicating a phenomenal increase in the number of indie games poured into the platform annually.
The month that recorded the lowest number of game uploads this year is January with 1,272 games. Since then, the number has spiked, reaching a new monthly record of 1,764 in August. At this rate, the platform will likely end this year with over 16,000 games published. The increasing number of Steam game uploads presents a new challenge to anyone considering the indie route.
The danger of a high volume of Steam game uploads for indie developers
Several companies announced restructuring last year which led to the loss of over 10,000 jobs in the game industry. Several studios, including Saints Row maker, Volition, were shut down. The trend continued this year with more job losses and studio closures.
Watching the trend, many analysts predicted the rise in the volume of indie games poured into the industry—and the figures don’t lie. While some of those who lost their jobs have since joined other studios, others have chosen to make and publish indie games either solo or with a micro team.
Although going indie allows developers to take their destiny into their own hands, too many hands getting into indie games presents a new challenge which we will highlight below.
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Game discovery will become more difficult
If you place 5 numbered balls of identical sizes and colors into a bucket, you can easily pick out a ball of any number. However, the same is not the case when there are thousands of such balls. It is the same with more indie games pouring into Steam.
It makes it harder for games to be discovered, except the developer has a huge marketing budget which they can use to promote their games. The rest will get drowned in the platform.
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As an indie developer, the latter is a nightmare considering the work hours and resources you must have invested into the game. It’ll be even harder to handle for those with no other source of income or betted heavily on the success of their games.
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The number of gamers is not growing
Even making it harder to succeed as an indie developer now is the fact that the number of gamers appears to have stagnated—a point Xbox boss Phil Spencer highlighted earlier this year in an interview.
Consequently, every developer is selling to the same audience—and there is a limit to the number of games that a player can purchase in a month. The rising inflation and cost of living crisis around the globe have further diminished the gaming budget of most players.
Investing in indie games is almost always a gamble because indie developers ship lots of shovelware annually. Making matters worse is that Steam doesn’t vet games before accepting them on the platform—although the “Profile Features Limited” tag appears to be a means of fixing that flaw. Therefore, not many gamers would be willing to gamble with indie titles using diminishing resources.
So, do you think going indie is the right decision for developers who may have been recently laid off? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
