Steam‘s annual end-of-year recap, Steam Replay, provides fascinating insights into gamer habits by comparing individual user behavior with platform-wide trends. This year, one standout statistic is that only 15% of players’ gaming time was spent on new releases—titles that debuted in 2024.
A Closer Look at the Numbers
While 15% might seem low, it’s an improvement over 2023’s 9%, though still below 2022’s 17%. Most gaming time shifted toward older titles, with 47% spent on games one to seven years old and 37% on games eight years or older.
What’s driving this trend? Part of it is likely due to live-service games and extensive wish lists, where players delay purchasing games until discounted sales. Successful new releases like Palworld, Helldivers 2, Delta Force, and Banana helped push the numbers up slightly in 2024. The explosive popularity of Black Myth: Wukong also boosted the active Chinese player base on Steam for weeks, influencing this year’s data.
The Live-Service Impact
Live-service games are a major factor keeping players loyal to older titles. Longstanding favorites like Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 dominate Steam’s top 10 global charts year after year, showing no signs of losing ground. These games create an enduring loop that leaves little room for newer releases to take hold.
This mix of loyalty to live-service titles and delayed adoption of new games reveals a complex gaming landscape on Steam, where fresh releases compete with long-standing favorites for players’ time and attention.
