Growing Popularity of Co-op Games on Steam
– 2 min read
Cooperative games like Palworld, Helldivers 2 and Content Warning have been very successful on Steam this year. This continues the trend of recent years, as co-op games tend to generate significantly more revenue than non-co-op games.
Steam market researchers at Video Game Insights (VGI) have released a report on the continued success of co-op games. According to the report, the number of co-op games released on Steam has increased from 383 (2018) to 799 (2023), with the largest increase occurring from 2019 to 2020 - from 388 to 647, most likely due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. VGI: "Covid further boosted co-op games through providing a social output during lockdown; post-Covid years saw a normalization, but 2024 bucks the trend."
Only six per cent of Steam games released in 2023 (13,936 in total) were co-op, but they accounted for 36 per cent of all units sold, or around 65.16 million out of 181 million. This year, co-op games actually accounted for 46 per cent of total sales (almost 40.8 million units), largely due to the success of Palworld, Helldivers 2 and Content Warning. VGI also counts Gray Zone Warfare (1.4 million units sold) as a co-op title, although the game is essentially an extraction shooter with PvP and therefore does not necessarily fall into this category.
"However, games with co-op elements tend to out-perform non co-op games by a wide margin across the spectrum, including in the small indie title end. (...) 106 co-op games have sold over 5 million units in their lifetime on Steam, making it a surprisingly attractive opportunity for larger publishers," VGI states. "Good co-op games encourage word of mouth and organic awareness spread, delivering a natural hype cycle for a game". They are shareable, memable, steamable and highly replayable.
Palworld
- Games sold: 19 Million
- Peak Players: 2.1 Million
Helldivers 2
- Games sold: 11 Million
- Peak Players: 459,000
Content Warning
- Games sold: 2.5 Million
- Peak Players: 204,000
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