Genres on Steam overlap: “Action” covers 80.5% of players on October 17

Steam assigns several genres to the same store page, and Statcade keeps them all, in Italian, as they come from the page. Counting the players of a genre means counting each game under each of its labels. The percentages in this article should be read one at a time: added up they exceed one hundred percent, because the same audience sits in several rows. To get closer to a comparable audience, it is better to use the label's median and the weight of its top title, calculated one by one below.

Even for Shooter, a narrower label than “Action”, one title bends the total. It covers 46 games and 1,809,569 players, 33.5% of the reading. The median is 9,859.5 players online. Counter-Strike 2 alone is 568,345 people, 31.4% of those players. Massively Multiplayer is on 33 games and 1,375,225 players, 25.5%, with a median of 15,034. RPG is on 99 games and 1,599,273 players, 29.6%, median 5,570. Simulation is on 87 games, median 7,216. Among labels with at least 30 games, the highest medians are free-to-play (17,928, across 41 pages) and massively multiplayer. The number of pages and the number of people diverge as soon as you look at the middle of the list and at the sum.

Strategy is the case where the sum misleads directly. The label covers 56 games and 1,272,417 players, 23.5%. Dota 2, which on its store page is also strategy, contributes 505,317, 39.7% of the total. A strategy game in the sense of a campaign, a 4X or a turn-based tactics game has an audience to be measured against similar titles, excluding Dota 2. At the opposite extreme, Puzzle is on 17 games, 18,041 players, median 155. Horror is on 23 games, 193,081 players, median 3,938. Using this catalog's total as the denominator, for a puzzle or a horror game, means planning on a market that those labels, that day, had on a different scale.

Indie, in the file, is a label of 101 games and 1,315,751 players, 24.4%, median 3,179. Of its players, 1,111,063 were on the 94 paid titles and 204,688 on the 7 free ones. At the top of the same reading, by players online, the label appears on WARDOGS, Bongo Cat (115,467, free), Valheim (71,911), Slay the Spire 2, Rust (64,212), TBH: Task Bar Hero (58,688, free) and Stardew Valley (55,181). For an independent studio, the comparison within the label is the median, 3,179 people that Saturday morning, and then the titles close in price. The 1.3 million sum describes the whole label, including an early access game with 195,074 players online.

A stable way to read these rows, when they serve a decision, is this. Start from the label, count how many store pages carry it, look at the median, and isolate the title that on its own makes up about a third of the total. What remains looks more like a set of comparable games. The sum, with overlapping labels and with the top of the catalog included, describes the reading. The numbers come from data/games.json at 5:22 UTC on October 17: the games tracked by Statcade, already skewed towards the most played ranking.