Valve "followed" 1.7 million Steam users for over a year, and now reports those gamers spent $20 million on microtransactions and another $73 million on games and DLC

Valve says the data proves "Steam isn’t just a storefront—it provides social community, game discoverability, interactive events, and a deep set of game-enhancing features to attract and retain players who will be checking out new games in the future."

I think it proves that Steam is the largest storefront on PC and that PC is growing and replacing other platforms.

PC is the fastest growing market. Consoles are slumping and I think the return of Steam Machines done right would accelerate the market shift.
- They'd be a shoe-in now that Valve developed Proton so well

$20 million on microtransactions

Please don't.

$73 million on games and DLC

$42 per person average? Those are rookie numbers!

20 million divided by 1.7 is about $11 per person, which isnt really that high.
I also think theres a distinction to be made between microtransactions in f2p titles and microtransactions in AAA premium titles. I logged something like 4000 hours in Mechwarrior online and I bought mech packs because I wanted to support the devs.
- I think that's entirely fair.
  I do wonder how much of that money has gone to the developers themselves, and not just some executive
Man, I downloaded my data from steam for the past ten years I've been active and the total $ amount made me sad. It's definitely not $42 a year....
- I've been on steam for over 4 years and I've spent a whopping $0.99.
- I realise i must be an edge case but i think my steam account of 10+ years is positive money wise. Got thousands of hours in the same few games and sold my old €100 CS inventory for about €500 PayPal when the market boomed.
  The amount of money I've spent on my system to play those few games at more fps tho, lets not calculate.
- It's like 60 / month I bet 😂
I feel like a lot of the microtransaction revenue is DLC as well. But like someone else said, there are the rare games that are free to play and don’t have super predatory mtx like Path of Exile or The Finals.
Fuck paying for them in full priced games though

The 1.7 million customers who originated from a top 2023 release

This wording is a bit strange, are they tracking the new steam accounts that signed up to buy a specific 2023 title (like Baldur's Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, or Starfield)?

If so it says more about the specific demographic attracted to that unknown title than it does about Steam in general.

Edit:

The methodology is explained here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/751641001553035271

To gather data illustrating the effectiveness of that approach, we went all the way back to 2023 and identified the biggest 20 releases of that year. We looked at every new first-time purchaser generated by those products (that is, an account making a purchase, or redeeming a Steam key, for the first time) for a total of 1.7 million new users.

Yeah, that's a bit strange. Not everyone starts their account by a big game. My current steam account is quite old and first games were the ones I could afford back then as a student: indie titles, freebies, maybe one big game at some point. My previous account was only for HL / CS.

That seems like a lot, but that's <$12/user in microtransactions and ~$43/user in games. That's like.. 2 microtransaction purchases and a couple indie games each.

But the sad reality is that the mtx are in all likelyhood,concentrated in a small group of users.
- No doubt, but it's still not a lot over the sample size.

Thanks to them (the people buying microtransactions) for helping ruin the industry!

Elaborate?
It's easy to just spout generic steam hate, but I'd love to hear what steam does worse than other pc storefronts.
- Lmao... it's not Steam hate, it's the people buying the MTX. I wasn't clear enough, my bad.
I don't think microtransactions are inherently bad, they are just used in the most greedy, money-grabbing ways.
There are some free-to-play games that don't restrict your access to any gameplay at all as a free player, which can only be subsidized by microtransactions. If it's just cosmetics, and they're priced fairly, I wouldn't feel any concern over it.
I say this as someone who will put 100 hours into a f2p game and maybe spend $10-20 on a skin or two. I feel that it's fair to spend that much after reaping so many hours of play.
- I'd be with you if I still got to keep the game and the skins I bought in perpetuity, but that's basically unheard of.
- If it's free to play, then some cosmetic mtx are fine, thats what I used to think, the problem is how egregious they have become. They are not designed as a way to support a game, they are designed to suck as much money as they can from you. Which is why I disagree with supporting them at all anymore.
  Games should be a one-off purchase, with no extra added bullshit.

just did the math, I've averaged about $165/yr on steam, with very little (though not none) microtransactions. like maybe less than $50 total in 15 years.

I think I probably have a similar average on my 18 yr old account, except the only microtransactions on my account are credits from selling any hats, skins and duplicate weapons I unlocked for free in TF2 and CS 😅

From their report report :

[ For years we’ve seen an encouraging pattern. Hit new releases are excellent at generating new first-time purchasers, and we’ve tried to build many platform features to encourage those new users to stick around, find more great games, and play with friends. To gather data illustrating the effectiveness of that approach, we went all the way back to 2023 and identified the biggest 20 releases of that year. We looked at every new first-time purchaser generated by those products (that is, an account making a purchase, or redeeming a Steam key, for the first time) for a total of 1.7 million new users. Then we followed that cohort of new users. The stats below represent what those players did from January 2024 through early March 2025.
......

That cohort of players has gone on to spend $20 million on in-game transactions across hundreds of other games—plus another $73 million on premium games and DLC across thousands more products. ]

So they are not average gamers, more like new blood in steam, and the numbers are for money they spent additional after the reason they came to steam.

Would that even count as a "whale"?

Less than 20 dollars per user on "microtransactions" which the article goes on to define as "in-game transactions". And 73 dollars on direct steam purchases of games/DLC which very well could just be a single newly released game.

So... one "battle pass" or two or three cosmetics for a live game and a new game or a season pass or two of DLC for an older one?