You will see it everywhere: “the Steam marketplace is oversaturated” - a daunting and somewhat discouraging statement for any aspiring game developer.

More often than not the statement of oversaturation is linked to the number of games released which is rapidly increasing year on year^1,2. Coupled with a large percentage of games struggling to generate significant revenue or find an audience¹, it makes you wonder if the naysayers are right; maybe the market is just oversaturated?

However, with around 120,000 titles on Steam and an estimated 1.8 billion PC gamers³, surely this statement cannot be the bottom line? So in this article we’re going to do what we do best at Game Oracle and look to our Steam Map for answers.

Is Steam a crowded room or are there just too many crowded corners?

What Does Saturated Even Mean and How do we Measure it?

We developed our Steam Map to provide game developers with a comprehensive view of every game available on Steam in a way that shows how games are similar or dissimilar. The intention is to provide a ‘map’ that guides developers towards opportunities in the market, because we believe every game developer deserves to create a game that is loved by players. We think we can achieve this by identifying underserved audiences.

In short, each data point on the Steam Map (shown in the image below; top) represents a game. The position of the game in the map is determined using the description, tags, genre, and images that describe the game. The distance between games on the map represents how similar they are (see image below; bottom).

So what does this all have to do with market saturation? Well, when an area of the market is saturated, we can expect to see many similar games bundled together on the map - we refer to the region as having ‘high density’. In contrast, unsaturated regions of the map will have fewer games, or the games will be spread apart which results in a region with lots of gaps - we refer to such regions as having ‘low density’. In the image below, we have zoomed into our Steam Map, and you can clearly see regions of low and high density.

To summarise, we define saturation in the market as the density of games in the Steam Map. This means that there are saturated regions with lots of games, but also unsaturated regions with fewer games. It is the the unsaturated regions which could present an opportunity for developers to fill the gaps with games that do not exist yet!

How Saturated is Steam?

Now that we understand what density is on our Steam Map, let’s take a look at how saturated the Steam marketplace is and see if we can identify any opportunities.

Our Steam Map is built in a 3D space, but we can collapse it into two dimensions and overlay the density of games which looks like the image below:

In the image above, dense, saturated regions are shown in red and unsaturated regions are in blue, with a gradient between the two to show incresing density. This density map is what we use to generate our in-house Uniqueness Score.

There are clearly some low density regions, but so what? What if the only games worth creating are in those saturated red regions? If this was the case, we could reliably say “Yes, Steam is a an oversaturated market and we should consider a career change”. But what if the opposite is true - are there low density, unsaturated regions of the market that offer the opportunity for success? Are there underserved audiences waiting for the game of their dreams?

To answer the question, we need to look at the “distribution of success” in our Steam Map. To measure success we will look at the distribution of positive reviews accross the map - if a game recieves a lot of positive reviews we can assume that:

1. Many people brought the game
2. Many people enjoyed the game

The image below now shows the density of positive reviews. Regions containing lots of positive reviews are highlighted in red:

Now that we have a map that tells us where the saturated and unsaturated regions are and a map showing us where high performing games exist, we can combine them. In fact, this is exactly what we do to generate our Gap Score.

The red areas on the map contain a low number of games but have high numbers of positive reviews i.e. unstauturated regions where games of that type tend to do well. This indicates that there is a potential audience waiting to play these types of games (a high demand), but not a lot of these types of games are being made. The red areas on the map make it immediately clear that many opportunities do exist within the marketplace so let’s pull out some examples and explore what kind of opportunities exist today.

Exploring the Opportunities on Steam

We decided to carry out a little exercise - what if we rank games by their Gap Score? Can we find some examples of games that found their audience in undersaturated ‘gaps’ of the market?

First, we purposely chose games that have been released in the last year to capture recent trends - we know that game ‘types’ go in and out of fashion and there will be regions with a high Gap Score that are dominated by trends that have since died off. That doesn’t mean they are not opportunities and maybe your game could be the one to revive a trend!

We also chose games that recieved:

1. At least 1,000 reviews
2. A Steam review rating of at least 8/10 (‘Very Positive’).

This was to try and capture commerically successful games - 1,000 reviews seems like a reasonable number considering at an average price of $15 that would correspond to a gross revenue of $200-600k (a rough estimate using the Boxlietter method).

We found 384 titles that met this criteria and ranked them by Gap Score (the amount of opportunity for similar games). Interestingly, the average Uniqueness Score of these 384 games was slightly higher compared to games released in the same period that recieved less than 1,000 reviews. We haven’t found any convincing correlation between uniqueness and success, but the weak trend could mean that there is a demand for unique games.

Let’s take a look at four examples of games with the highest Gap Scores that have managed to find an audience this past year on Steam. In the image below we can see where these games fall on our Steam Map:

1. Balatro

For those that follow the latest big hits on Steam, this one should be no surprise. It was created by solo developer LocalThunk and published by Playstack.

• Game type: Roguelike, deckbuilding combining poker mechanics with unique twists.
• Success: 50,000 reviews, 97% being positive.
• Standout Features: Its innovative approach to poker gameplay, allows players to "cheat" by using special Joker cards and other modifiers to create absurdly high-scoring hands, all wrapped in a stylish and addictive package.

2. The Planet Crafter

Developed by Miju Games.

• Game type: First-person survival where players terraform a barren planet.
• Success: 40,000 reviews and rated as 'Overwhelmingly Positive'.
• Standout Features: A unique concept around gradually transforming an entire planet through crafting and resource management, allowing players to witness the environment evolve from a desolate wasteland to a thriving ecosystem as they progress.

3. KinitoPET

For those of you that still have nightmares about clippy, give this one a miss. Developed by indie creator troy_en.

• Game type: A horror game that presents itself as a seemingly innocent virtual pet software.
• Success: 8,500 reviews and rated as 'Very Positive'
• Standout Features: The game has gained attention in the indie horror community for its unsettling atmosphere and unique premise. Its deceptive facade of a friendly desktop companion gradually reveals a more sinister nature, blending elements of visual novels, puzzle-solving, and psychological horror in an innovative way.

4. Paper Lily - Chapter 1

Developed by indie creator Leef 6010, this game has gained a dedicated following in the indie horror community,

• Game type: horror, RPG featuring multiple puzzle solutions and a unique storytelling approach.
• Success: Over 4,000 reviews rated 'Overwhelmingly Positive'.
• Standout Features: Its emphasis on player choice in puzzle-solving and exploration of themes like depression and isolation, with a striking visual style that combines hand-drawn 2D characters with ethereal environments.

The common theme across these four different games is their unique combination of mechanics, genres, storytelling and art styles to produce truly innovative games that fill gaps in the market. Whether they intended to fill those gaps is unknown, but the execution of their concepts and the resulting high-quality experience has been rewarded by commercial success and sometimes communities springing up around the games.

As well as unique game-play, these games and their high Gap Scores highlight the importance of finding an underserved audience. Once we find the gap with an audience, our job as game developers is to create a great player experience that we can be proud of and that players will shout about.

Steam is Not Saturated - There Are Plenty of Opportunities

We do not think the Steam market is oversaturated; we see plenty of opportunities when guided by strong market research. In the analysis we have performed above it was clear that there are many gaps in the market for innovative games, and examples like Balatro and Paper Lily show that new exciting games can certainly find an audience. It is true that a majority of games on Steam do not find their audience (75% recieve less than 100 reviews), but you should bear in mind that success or failure is often down to quality, marketing, and execution.

We firmly believe there are still opportunities for high-quality, innovative games to succeed. It has been reported that the number of games earning over $10,000 in their first three months has actually increased year on year ¹ and the number of PC gamers has been steadily increasing at a healthy rate³.

More often than not we see market oversaturation being blamed for the poor performance of many new titles, and whilst that might be true for some games, our analysis has shown that there are still plenty of gaps waiting for the right game. So if you are concerned about market saturation, our advice is to focus on delivering high quality experiences to specific audiences, and manage your expectations of success by comparing your progress to relevant competitors.

References

1. Game World Observer | 41k games released on Steam over past 3 years, 50% of which made $500 or less in gross revenue
2. statista | Number of games released on Steam worldwide from 2004 to 2024 YTD
3. statista | Number of PC gaming users worldwide from 2008 to 2024