Seems reasonable to me. What percentage of games on steam have been released in 2024? Gotta be a smoll percentage. Actually, 15 percent seems pretty high now that you mention.
"A whooping 15 percent" seems like a better title.
I'm the guy who is consistently picking up old games that he's always wanted when they go on a steam sale years later for single digits. So I'm constantly three or four (or more years) behind. And I don't really mind because I'm always a single player who doesn't enjoy any form of online multiplayer.
So do I care that I only last month picked up EU4 and a bunch of DLC for cheap, not one bit. Same for Civ 6.
I'll happily chug away at my old games that no one cares about anymore.
My guess is that Palworld and Helldivers 2 carried a good chunk of that time. I was going to mention Factorio Space Age, but it would just track time for base game. Satisfactory has been in early access for a long time, but officially released 1.0 this year as well, I wonder how that'd count.
I hope this article isn't because the industry might consider shifting to a complete subscription model, I really can't afford the rising cost of new games on release or overpriced subscription models.
And that's a biased statistic. My recap shows I spent 1% of my time playing games released in 2024 when I know, for a fact, that I didn't. Upon further investigation, I found that it was counting my play time in Palworld as 1% even though it still shows as "0 minutes" because I literally only opened it to check that it worked.
I want to get Still Wakes the Deep but for what is apparently a pretty short game I'll be waiting for a better discount. that's about the only 2024 game I've been interested in