Comment by gilbetron | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gilbetron | Hacker News Reader

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I think your maybe counting just physical sales? 15 years ago was the start of the shift to digital sales, which have greatly grown. Just steam (which is the bulk of digital PC sales):

Steam units sold: 402M (2019) → 704M (2024), up 21% in 2024 alone.

Steam peak concurrent users: 3.52M in January 2011 → 42,042,778 on January 11, 2026. Roughly twelvefold, directly measured from Valve's API.

Valve's own disclosed number, which isn't an estimate by anyone: between August 2024 and August 2025, Steam averaged 109,000 people making their first ever purchase every day. That's about 40 million brand-new paying customers in one year.

Games released on Steam: ~8,100 in 2019 → 20,282 in 2025.

Steam gross revenue: $4.5B (2019) → roughly $16.9B (2025).

Some of the best selling games did come out roughly 15 years ago, but that's because they've been selling consistently ever since. Like Minecraft, the Witcher, etc.

Not counting physical, which certainly died.

Games released is not indicative of revenues: 80% of steam games make < $5k, and median steam game makes at most a few hundred $. So that doesn't really tell much about sales.

Recent data seems available in reports from Newzoo: their The PC & Console Gaming Report 2025 states there was 1.2% total PC growth 2021-2024 in nominal dollars (40.5B to $40-42B). In real dollars that is around -15%, so enough shrinkage that many industries would really feel the pain. In smaller sections, their 2014, 2017, 2024 reports show PC share of global games spend fell 17%. They (and SuperData) data show premium PC fell a few percent (nominal, more in real $). Playtime per player fell 26% (Newzoo 2024, 2025).

Also, around 50-60% of revenue, which is nice, is not new game sales, but microtransactions, and these are extremely weighted to the largest few games. Of the remaining, around 10-15% is subscription fees, also not new sales.

Using Steam as a proxy for the whole industry hides losses if more title % moved to Steam, since then the numbers you posted are not comparing like to like.

Some Newzoo data is easily found, use AI to find copies of their closed reports floating around the internet.

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