I’ve spoken about the Steam Deck before, what my thoughts were, how I hoped that it would increase the Linux market share within gaming, provide competition in the portable gaming market etc. Now that it’s been out for a while, and clearly been successful, we’re continuing to see more and more fascinating information come out about the platform and its impact. One piece of info that I’ve found particularly interesting is the games that people are choosing to play and I thought it would be interesting to do a comparison of the most popular games on Steam and the Steam Deck.
Let’s start by taking a look at the most popular games on Steam itself. Looking at the chart below which was taken on the day that this article was written, you’ll notice that multiplayer games, particularly shooters, dominate the Steam platform with only a couple of games that could be considered single player scattered among them. This makes sense to me as multiplayer games tend to be highly replayable while also receiving content updates regularly.
Now let’s take a look at the games that are popular on the Steam Deck. As far as I’m aware, it was only at the beginning of August that Valve, via their Steam Deck Twitter, started pointing out what the most popular games were on Steam Deck. According to Valve, based on the week coming up to August and in order of daily average user, the most popular Steam Deck games were Multiversus, Vampire Survivors, Stray, Elden Ring, No Man’s Sky, Hades, Stardew Valley, Grand Theft Auto V, Aperture Desk Job and Monster Hunter Rise. You’ll notice that there is much more representation from single player or single player dominant games in this list compared to the overall platform.
It gets even more interesting in the most recent stats provided by Valve via their Steam Deck Twitter in which they took a look at the most popular games on the Steam Deck over the course of August by total hours played. These games are Vampire Survivors, Cult of the Lamb, Elden Ring, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Stardew Valley, No Man’s Sky, Hades, Multiversus, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition and Monster Hunter Rise. What’s fascinating about this to me is that the top 2 games don’t even have a multiplayer component while Grand Theft Auto V, a game arguably more popular for its multiplayer than single player, has left the list and been replaced by Skyrim which can only be played in multiplayer in a modded form.
Now there’s probably several reasons for this. Considering that the Steam Deck is portable, it may be a case that people would rather play single player games rather than deal with potentially volatile internet. It could also be because of the control scheme which, while capable of playing games designed for keyboard and mouse, is not as accurate in many games as a keyboard and mouse and, considering the competitive nature of multiplayer games, people may just want to play a single player game, many of which aren’t anywhere near as demanding.
As someone who is a fan of single player games, I’m glad to see that Steam Deck is offering an environment where they can thrive and their success is fascinating to me. Let me know your thoughts on the comparison of the most popular games on Steam and the Steam Deck, some reasons you think may be responsible for the differences, the impact that you think the Steam Deck will have and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.