Forums > News > MobyGames Stats - 2024 edition
vedder (75617) on 1/9/2025 7:34 PM · edited · Reply · Permalink · Report
A new year, a new graph and animated chart! 🥳 The database visualization showing the almost exponential growth in games over the past decades and our noble effort to document them all!
(Click to enlarge)
An explanation: each coloured shape in the graph represents a platform. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical axis represents the number of games released and is stacked. So the height of a shape on a given point in time indicates the number of games released for that platform that year. The total height of the graph on a given point in time shows the total releases that year. The graph is meant to represent game releases and thus excludes DLC, Special Edition and Compilation items. Each game is represented once for each platform it was released on.
As usual we see a drop-off at the end, simply because we haven't been able to keep up with all the new game releases.
Feel free to point out interesting info in the graph and your contributions in the thread!
I have also updated the bar chart race I made last year with this year's data:
(click to go to animation)
Previous editions:
January 2024 -
January 2023 -
January 2022 -
January 2021 -
January 2020 -
January 2019 -
January 2018 -
June 2017 -
January 2017 -
January 2016 -
January 2015 -
January 2014 -
January 2013 -
January 2012 -
January 2011 -
January 2010 -
January 2009
vedder (75617) on 1/15/2025 9:35 PM · Reply · Permalink · Report
2013 was when Valve opened up the floodgates by removing the curated Steam Greenlight process and just letting everyone release whatever they want on Steam. I think that's the incline you see around that period. Not only did all games in the Greenlight process get released, the risk of starting development was suddenly a lot lower so a lot more people started making PC games because being able to sell it on the biggest online distribution platform was no longer a question-mark but a guarantee.