Valve Reveals The most Popular Steam Games Of 2016

Valve wrapped up 2016 in a big way, and a lot of new games managed to find their way onto Valve's digital distribution platform, Steam. Well, there's a list of games that were most popular on the digital distribution service in 2016.

According to Gamespot, Valve released a list of games that managed to be the top-grossing titles for revenue in 2016. They didn't reveal what the detailed revenue numbers were for each game, but they give you a pretty good hint based on how the games are classified. They break down into the following categories: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. That's from most revenue to least.

Platinum

_• Civilization VI _

• Dota 2

• Total War: Warhammer

• Tom Clancy's The Division

• Rocket League

• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

_• No Man's Sky _

• GTA V

• Fallout 4

• XCOM 2

• Dark Souls III

Gold

_• Stellaris _

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

• Arma III

_• ARK: Survival Evolved _

• Stardew Valley

_• Dead By Daylight _

_• Team Fortress 2 _

_• HIZI: King of the Kill _

_• Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration Edition _

• Rainbow Sixe: Siege

_• DOOM _

• Warframe

Silver

_• Dying Light: The Following Enhanced Edition _

_• Hearts of Iron IV _

_• Cities Skylines _

_• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided _

_• Subnautica _

_• Europa Universalis IV _

_• War Thunder _

_• Watch Dogs 2 _

_• The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim _

_• Rust _

• Smite

_• Payday 2 _

_• The Elder Scrolls Online _

_• Civilization V _

_• Planet Coaster _

• Far Cry: Primal

Bronze

• _Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel _

_• Borderlands 2 _

_• Mafia III _

_• Dishonored 2 _

_• Path of Exile _

_• Far Cry 4 _

_• Dishonored _

_• Garry's Mod _

_• NBA 2K17 _

_• Divinity Original Sin: Enhanced Edition _

_• Farming Simulator 17 _

_• YouTubers Life: Xmas Special _

_• American Truck Simulator _

_• Undertale _

_• The Culling _

• Hitman

Those lists are very, very, very telling. We see that there's a healthy mixture of both indie and AAA titles intermixed between each category, from Platinum down to Bronze.

And despite Valve not releasing numbers on the revenue, we definitely get an idea of how much revenue each of those games made by looking at what the top grossing game from each category made, and being able to guesstimate what the others made in between. For instance, Civilization VI, according to Steam Spy, released in late October at $59.99 and garnered around 1.4 million owners in that time, which would mean it generated around $84 million. It took a 10% price cut after December 20th, 2016, and sold about 140,000 more copies since then, so that would roughly add $7.5 million to the total, bringing the generated revenue to $91.5 million.

And we can also gather that Dark Souls III sold about 1.3 million copies at the $59.99 price point, meaning it earned $74 million since April. It gained an additional 120,000 in sales after dropping down to $29.99, earning it an extra $3.6 million and bringing the total to around $77.6 million in total. So we can basically figure that every game in the platinum category between Civilization VI and Dark Souls III made anywhere between $91 million and $77.6 million.

This also means that everything below the Platinum category earned less than $77.6 million. That's still a lot of money for these games to generate in 2016 alone. The better the game, the better the tail end, as evidence with the fact that The Witcher III from 2015 is still in the Platinum category, earning CD Projekt Red tens of millions of dollars on PC alone well after its release.

Also it means that older games like Skyrim and indie titles like Rust still have staying power thanks to a dedicated and robust community. Developers should definitely take note as to what gamers are buying and going back to buying well after some of the games have released. It's also interesting that half of Steam's top Platinum sellers for 2016 weren't even released in 2016. Interesting figures, nonetheless.