Average Steam game sells 32,000 copies

The average game on Steam sells approximately 32,000 copies, according to data from Steam Spy.

A new report by Sergey Galyonkin digs deep into sales and usage data on Valve’s digital store. It claims that titles such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have around 8.6 million users, while Grand Theft Auto V sold 2.2m on PC in less than a month. The average game sells far lower however at 32,000.

It should be noted that while 32,000 may seem low in comparison, for many small developers this could be considered a success.

Breaking down into genres, RPGs, action and strategy games are among the most popular, selling between 40,000 and 55,000 copies on average. The average free-to-play game meanwhile is said to attract some 330,000 users. Early Access and simulation games are reported to sell the lowest, though there are still obvious examples of multiple big successes in these areas.

The US represents the largest Steam audience with 22.5m users, or 18 per cent of total users. Here, open-world games and shooters are thought to be the most popular. In fact, 28 per cent of all games owned on Steam were purchased by US users.

Elsewhere, Russia claims 13.6m users, Germany 6.8m, the UK 5.1m, France 4.8m and Poland 3.5m. For success in Russia, the report claims those who localise their game will see a six per cent rise in players, while having a free-to-play multiplayer title may see the number of players from the region rise even further.

China is noted as an emerging market on Steam. GTA V is thought to have sold 225,000 copies in the country, while free-to-play games like Dota 2 are increasingly popular there.

You can view the entire SteamSpy report here.