So I looked at the top 100 best rated games released on Steam during 2024, and I saw some interesting trends.
First, only two games were AAA titles. They were Black Myth: Wukong and SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS. And even then, I’m being a little bit charitable by calling the latter title an AAA game.
As for everything else? Budget title indies. Most titles were priced under $30. And 22 of them were free – not “free with in-app purchases”, but simply free.
The other trend is that few of these games got press attention even though, in a lot of cases, they had a large playerbase.
Case in point: the highest rated game on Steam is MiSide which has a 97% positive rating based on 87,019 reviews. I checked news archives and MiSide hardly got any mentions from the gaming press. No mentions on GameSpot, IGN, or PC Gamer. How did gaming journalists miss out on the highest rated game of 2024?
But the most surprising trend is that the bulk of the 100 highest rated games on Steam are PC exclusives. As much as people say we are living in a post-platform world this is simply not the case. For instance, only 2 of the top 10 Steam games of 2024 got a multi-platform release – Balatro and Black Myth: Wukong.
You would think a beloved game like Satisfactory would already arrive on PS5 or Xbox Series X|S, but after six years of development, it is still PC-only. Now to be fair, Satisfactory is supposed to arrive on consoles. But that game has been on Early Access for PC since 2019 – and there’s no firm release date for console versions.
There are three takeaways here: price does not indicate quality, don’t believe the hype, and exclusives still matter.
I categorize Linux and Steam Deck as “PC exclusive” because it kind of doesn’t matter: ProtonDB makes the vast majority of Windows games playable anyway.
Where it definitely matters is in the realm of PC vs. console. Most of these games don’t have a console release.
I think you missed a word in paragraph 4, “got press attention even though, in a lot of cases, they had a large player base” I believe you meant to add a negative before “got press attention”, or got little press attention
I checked out (searched steam for) the highest rated game mentioned in your post, I’m not surprised it didn’t get much press coverage, honestly it’s probably better for that game to fly beneath the coverage radar.
It’s up to the community to make these games go viral. Most games in my library were under 15€ on sale and I don’t think I have a single “AAA” title in there. They are just pricey, require expensive hardware and are most likely all hype. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that most players can’t afford that shit.
To me, this list is just yet another confirmation that game media like the one you mentioned is just paid and unoriginal. They ride a wave to get clicks, that’s it.
Steam’s best rated games of 2024 aren’t what you’d expect!
Oh?!
One high budget game that made a splash because it came from China and still appeals to a western audience. Another high budget game from a much beloved IP where even the shitty offerings have quite a large and rabid fan base. Then a bunch of Indies that were labours of love, made by people who give a fuck and aren’t just trying to extract as much money from players as possible.
Honestly this is the best time to game on PC. Console exclusives never made it to PC before and things are much cheaper on PC. Consoles charge you every step of the way even though the initial cost to own the platform is cheaper.
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Not surprised MiSide didn’t receive any press. The same thing happened for Doki Doki until a press piece went viral.
The thing about the “PC exclusive” is kinda dumb. All those kinda indie games usually run perfectly on linux and steamdeck.
I categorize Linux and Steam Deck as “PC exclusive” because it kind of doesn’t matter: ProtonDB makes the vast majority of Windows games playable anyway.
Where it definitely matters is in the realm of PC vs. console. Most of these games don’t have a console release.
Well yeah, these PC exclusives run perfectly on Linux PC’s, and PC’s with different form factors.
I think you missed a word in paragraph 4, “got press attention even though, in a lot of cases, they had a large player base” I believe you meant to add a negative before “got press attention”, or got little press attention
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No, I really do mean that few games got press mentions.
Gotcha, sorry my comprehension failed me.
I checked out (searched steam for) the highest rated game mentioned in your post, I’m not surprised it didn’t get much press coverage, honestly it’s probably better for that game to fly beneath the coverage radar.
I don’t think consoles do early access normally. Satisfactory only had its 1.0 recently, so it’s not surprising it’s not on consoles yet.
To be specific, it came out of early access in September 10, 2024. Which means, out of early access, it’s been an exclusive for five months.
Well, the MiSide game is in a niche genre. Not big news when most people will not be interested in that type of game.
MiSide has more players than Persona 3 Reload, so how niche is it really?
I’m not sure but compared to the biggest player bases isn’t it pretty small? I haven’t looked
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If you’re comparing to DOTA or Wukong, it’s small. But those games are exceptional compared to AAA titles as well.
But when you consider that 20,000 games were released on Steam last year, and MiSide had zero hype, I’d say 100K players is also exceptional.
It certainly performed better than Concord.
Ok, but what didn’t perform better than Concord? I don’t know if that’s a legit metric to use.
Tongue in cheek comment because I don’t think anything performed worse than Concord.
There’s some 0-effort Unity asset flips that performed worse. Some
I don’t know. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars, then discontinuing the game after eight days – I’ve never seen that before.
It’s up to the community to make these games go viral. Most games in my library were under 15€ on sale and I don’t think I have a single “AAA” title in there. They are just pricey, require expensive hardware and are most likely all hype. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that most players can’t afford that shit.
To me, this list is just yet another confirmation that game media like the one you mentioned is just paid and unoriginal. They ride a wave to get clicks, that’s it.
Anti Commercial-AI license
Oh?!
Nope. Not surprised at all, that totally tracks.
Honestly this is the best time to game on PC. Console exclusives never made it to PC before and things are much cheaper on PC. Consoles charge you every step of the way even though the initial cost to own the platform is cheaper.