I just checked Steam's year-end summary, and one statistic that caught my attention is the time spent playing games based on their release year.

The data shows that, on average, Steam players only spent 14% of their time playing games released in 2025.

I admit I never stopped to think about this. I know the video game market is oversaturated, with thousands of games released every day, but it seems the main competition isn't newly released games, but rather games from previous years.

This statistic surprised me a bit because I didn't expect it to be so low.

The rate of garbage production increased over time, too, so old games amongst the good are always going to rise. Or, in other words, bad games grow asymptotically faster :).

I know I’m in the minority on many things, but the only games I play regularly is Minesweeper, Tetris, TF2 and Ultrakill, none of which were released in 2025. I never go out of my way to find games released now, I simply don’t care about that.

I wouldn't have thought that either but, you live and learn.

The survey is about time played, though, which could be very different from sales. I'll check out new games but often won't spend too long on them if it's a short indie adventure, or it turns out I don't really enjoy it whereas, with an old game I'm familiar with like Civ IV, I'll happily spend 10 hours on a single campaign. 

Also, multiplayer games that people sink a lot of time into can take a while to get established. I know Fortnite's not on Steam, but that was a 2017 game, and is still massively popular all this time later. Steam has games like Team Fortress which probably still have large communities.

It's a surprising figure but shouldn't be setting off any alarm bells IMO.