GameDiscoverCo sought to determine the actual size of the Steam market and calculate the revenue generated by different categories of games. They did an experiment by tagging each game that earned over a million dollars with just two categories: genre and subgenre. The result revealed two dominant genres that alone account for three-quarters of the platform’s revenue.
The leading genre is action games, which make up 58.37% of the platform’s total revenue from video games. Following this are role-playing games (17.11%), strategy games (13.97%), simulators (9.76%), and sports games (1%).
When looking at the subgenres of action games, arena shooters have generated the most revenue, accounting for 18.99% of the genre’s income, which equals 9.52 billion dollars. The second spot is taken by first-person shooters (FPS), which have earned 6.67 billion dollars.
As for the role-playing games, the most profitable subgenres include action RPGs (26.45% or 3.89 billion dollars), MMORPGs (3.69 billion dollars), and CRPGs (2.69 billion dollars). In strategy games, the main subgenres are MOBAs (19.23% or 2.31 billion dollars), RTS games (1.84 billion dollars), and grand strategy games (1.16 billion dollars). For simulators, the highest-earning subgenres are generic simulators (44.57% or 3.74 billion dollars), job simulators (1.36 billion dollars), and racing games (942.89 million dollars).
In total (thanks Game World Observer) , the subgenres with the highest average revenue per game are arena shooters (634.8 million dollars), battle royales (354.2 million dollars), and hero shooters (206.7 million dollars). However, in the history of Steam, only 29 games in these categories have earned more than one million dollars. Nearly all the revenue comes from a few big hits.
On the other hand, visual novels and deck builders are the subgenres with the lowest average revenue per game, at 4.2 million and 3.4 million dollars, respectively.
