According to numbers gathered and released by Ico Partners, the weeks following both the Steam Summer Sale and the launch of the self-publishing tool Steam Direct have seen a noticeable bump in the number of new releases on Steam.
Between full and early access launches, the first week of August saw as many as 215 new games come to the platform.
For the most part, the number of releases has been steadily increasing since the beginning of July and the end of the Steam Summer Sale, as the chart below shows.
Even the first week of July, which caught the tail end of the Steam Summer Sale, saw a decent number of game launches.
During that week, 84 new games hit Steam while, as pointed out by Ico Partners’ Thomas Bidaux, only 28 games released on Steam during that same week in 2016.
Part of this increase could be, either directly or indirectly, thanks to the early effects of Steam Direct.
The self-publishing option went online in the middle of June to replace the late Steam Greenlight program but there were over 3,400 submitted games hanging in limbo following that closure. Valve took it upon itself to green-light as many of those pending titles as it “[had] confidence in”.
It’s possible some of the recent influx of games could be due to, at least in part, stragglers from the Greenlight program. But ultimately, only time will tell if the program itself and its recoupable $100 per-game submission fee have a lasting effect on the number of games that release on the digital storefront.