With $4.3 billion in sales, 2017 was Steam’s biggest year yet

steam_logo_3d

Steam is the biggest digital game distributor on PC, and 2017 was the best year yet for Valve’s platform. We already knew 7,600 games were released on Steam last year, but now we know roughly how much money it generated: approximately $4.3 billion.

Want to not spend money at Valve’s store? These are the best free Steam games.

That’s according to Steam Spy proprietor (and Epic’s head of publishing in Eastern Europe) Sergey Galyonkin, who’s hosting a panel on Steam’s numbers at GDC today. The $4.3 billion number is an estimate, but it’s likely the most accurate one we’re going to get, and it doesn’t include revenue generated by DLC or microtransactions.

It’s an impressive stat, and even more so when you consider the fact that entire PC game business earned a total of $32.3 billion last year. If you throw out revenue for packaged retail titles and browser games, that leaves the dedicated digital PC game business with a total value of $23.9 billion – and that number includes DLC, which the Steam estimate does not.

If the numbers are right, that means Valve own at least 18% of their specific market, and likely far more than that once in-game purchases are accounted for.