50 per cent of the total revenue on Steam was generated through sales of the top 100 games, according to 2017 data presented by SteamSpy in a GDC panel.

The top 100 only make up 0.5 percent of the 21,000 games available on Steam, according to a report of the panel by PGGamer. 7,696 games were released last year, representing an amazing 39 per cent of the overall total.

SteamSpy owner and operator Sergey Galyonkin said, “People compare it to the App Store and it’s not entirely fair because the App Store has way more games, but it is in the same realm, pretty much. It’s a number that no person, no gaming journalist could ever play in their life”.

The SteamSpy data only takes into account units sold, and does not include revenue from microtransactions, DLC, or refunds. Many free-to-play games rely on microtransactions to survive, and games such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive make money from in-game marketplaces.

Best year ever

SteamSpy revealed on Twitter before the GDC panel that Valve saw its best ever year last year, with $4.3 billion in sales compared to last year’s $3.5 billion in 2016.

Top of the sales list was Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, which has constantly dominated steam charts, but the top 20 also features indie games such as Cuphead and Divinity: Original Sin 2. Surprisingly, only seven of the top 20 games were released before 2017.

Galyonkin also covered statistics such as the difference between the American and US markets, and how games such as PUBG are played twice as much in the asian country.

SteamSpy’s data is collected once a day from the publically available Steam profiles based on the Web API provided by Valve, but does not take into account the small percentage of profiles are private, so data is not 100 per cent accurate.