I thought maybe I was imagining it (cataloging my video game backlog, it felt like half the games I was sitting on were from 2017) until I saw this stats chart on HLTB.com:
Obviously this isn’t every possible game that was published each year, but it is a trend, with a MASSIVE spike in 2017! I know the Switch came out that year, but that wouldn’t cause such a huge spike on its own, would it?
Steam opened their gates for trash games. In 2016 4200 games were released on it
AH that actually makes a lot of sense now.
That’s the statistic I was looking for the other day as well. I assumed that was the reason.
Are there any ideas why the count dropped after the peak? Did Steam raise the barrier again in some way(s)?
I don’t know if they put additional criteria in place, but I know they have purged a lot of shovelware in the last couple years.
