
Steam Shares Best-Selling Games of 2023 - Baldur's Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, and More - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 January 2024 / 11,340 ViewsValve has released the list of the most popular games on Steam in 2023.
The categories are the best-selling games by gross revenue, top new game releases, most played games, highest grossing Early Access games, most played games on Steam Deck, most played games using a controller, and highest grossing VR games.
Each category is broken down into Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze ranks with Platinum listing the top 12 games, Gold 13th to 24th place, Silver 25th to 50th place, and Bronze 51st to 100th place. Each of these groups are randomly ordered, so it isn't known what the best-selling game on Steam for the year was.
Here are the best-selling games on Steam as measured by gross revenue:
- Apex Legends
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Call of Duty (MW III, Warzone, MW II)
- Counter-Strike 2
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Destiny 2
- Dota 2
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Lost Ark
- PUBG: Battlegrounds
- Sons of the Forest
- Starfield
Here are the biggest launches on Steam as measured by revenue earned in first two weeks:
- Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
- Baldur's Gate 3
- Cities: Skylines II
- EA Sports FC 24
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Payday 3
- Remnant II
- Resident Evil 4 (remake)
- Sons of the Forest
- Starfield
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
- Street Fighter 6
Here are the most played games as measured by the number of peak concurrent players:
- Apex Legends
- Baldur's Gate 3
- Counter-Strike 2
- Destiny 2
- Dota 2
- Goose Goose Duck
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Lost Ark
- PUBG: Battlegrounds
- Sons of the Forest
- Starfield
Here are the top Early Access games as measured by gross revenue earned, including Early Access and full release revenue:
- Against the Storm
- Baldur's Gate 3
- Dave the Diver
- Demonologist
- Disney Dreamlight Valley
- Everspace 2
- Farlight 84
- Marvel Snap
- My Time at Sandrock
- Ready or Not
- Sun Haven
- Wartales
Here are the most played games on Steam Deck as measured by daily active player counts throughout the year (Only Steam Deck Verified games are counted):
- Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
- Baldur's Gate 3
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Dave the Diver
- Elden Ring
- Half-Life
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Resident Evil 4 (remake)
- Starfield
- Vampire Survivors
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Here are the games that registered the most controller sessions:
- Apex Legends
- Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
- Call of Duty (MW III, Warzone, MW II)
- EA Sports FC 24
- Elden Ring
- FIFA 23
- Hogwarts Legacy
- NBA 2K23
- Resident Evil 4 (remake)
- Rocket League
- Starfield
- Street Fighter 6
Here are the most popular VR games based on revenue earned:
- Beat Saber
- Blade & Sorcery
- Bonelab
- Boneworks
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted 2
- Ghosts of Tabor
- Gorilla Tag
- Half-Life: Alyx
- Into the Radius VR
- Pavlov
- VTOL VR
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Impressive Starfield still managed to reach Platinum status on Steam across the board despite also being on PC Game Pass.
There’s around 7M PC gamepass subscribers and 150m+ monthly active users on Steam.
Evidence overwhelmingly supports that Gamepass has almost zero effect on Steam concurrent user numbers for any given game.
What evidence are you aware of? Common sense tells us that it should have some level of impact. I would think that close to zero of those 7 million people are on Steam playing any of the games available on game pass.
Basic math (using the numbers you provided) would tell us that, all else being equal, game pass should players on steam reliance by about 5%. Of course, all else is not equal. So maybe there's some other factor to consider.
The fact that user numbers are freely available for every game, including games that release on Gamepass day one. There is no pattern that suggests Gamepass games have lower than expected numbers on steam.
Wo Long had a 75k peak concurrent user number. The Nioh games peaked at 10.6k and 41k. FH5 was way more successful than FH4. AA Games like Atomic Heart still hit 38k users, probably higher than expected.
I would define 5% as “almost zero” yes, perhaps a slight exaggeration.
It is not really surprising, as the game always seems to perform better than online chatter would have one believe, but I am impressed yet again by Destiny 2 managing to remain a top performer for so many years.
BG 3 was amazing
Sons of the Forest is soooooo damn good....... damn good.
I bet February 22nd can’t come soon enough for you ;)
It's just around the corner!
I didn't know apex was that popular. I thought it was dying out due to fortnite and others.
Good to see destiny still going strong
While Starfield's sales are impressive, indeed, doesn't that on the other go against the Game Pass strategy?
High sales, despite Game Pass, speak that GP isn't getting well received, yet.
In the contrary, lesser sales would mean more people played it via GP.
It's an interesting spot MS has put themselves into.
Apex legend is everywhere my man!
I think CoD is cheating a bit by rolling the revenue of 3 games into one.
Yeah, Steam completely randomizes the order within each category, Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze, so it is different each time you look at it. When I looked yesterday Starfield was shown at the top on Platinum, today Destiny 2 is shown at the top. William arranged them in alphabetical order for the article.