# What Steam's long tail actually does

Open research from ResidualPlay, computed from our own measurements of the full
Steam catalog: monthly review history for every game with real commercial activity,
going back to 2010. Recomputed nightly. Source: https://residualplay.com/insights

## Review decay by year of life

Median share of first-year reviews still earned in each later year, cohorts 2012-2024.

| Year of life | Median % of first year | Games |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 100% | 15763 |
| 1 | 55% | 15736 |
| 2 | 34.9% | 15658 |
| 3 | 29.7% | 12914 |
| 4 | 26.7% | 10929 |
| 5 | 24.5% | 9088 |
| 6 | 22.6% | 7504 |
| 7 | 21.4% | 6029 |
| 8 | 20.2% | 4901 |

The curve flattens after year two: a game that survives its third year keeps
earning at roughly the same rate for as long as we can measure.

## What a discount actually does

Review velocity during discounted months versus that same game's own full-price months.

| Discount band | Lift vs full price | Games |
|---|---|---|
| 1-39 | 1.39x | 2164 |
| 40-59 | 1.27x | 2883 |
| 60-74 | 1.3x | 2345 |
| 75+ | 1.41x | 2554 |
| none | 1x | 6005 |

Caveat: deep discounts cluster around Steam seasonal sales, when traffic is high
for everyone, and heavy discounters skew older. What the data does say is that
cutting deeper does not buy proportionally more units.

## Yearly pulse of the tracked catalog

| Year | Reviews written | Active games |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2.672718e+06 | 3466 |
| 2015 | 3.546379e+06 | 5492 |
| 2016 | 4.999287e+06 | 8207 |
| 2017 | 6.277253e+06 | 11151 |
| 2018 | 5.791048e+06 | 13998 |
| 2019 | 8.781468e+06 | 16605 |
| 2020 | 1.6734155e+07 | 19730 |
| 2021 | 1.7459159e+07 | 22900 |
| 2022 | 1.6936484e+07 | 26194 |
| 2023 | 1.8538608e+07 | 29829 |
| 2024 | 2.1556539e+07 | 34041 |
| 2025 | 2.1688027e+07 | 38679 |
| 2026 | 1.5649998e+07 | 41072 |

The 2020 jump is the pandemic. The current year is partial.

## When the long tail sells

Share of a full year's reviews earned in each calendar month, 2019 through last year.

| Month | Share of the year |
|---|---|
| 1 | 8.4% |
| 2 | 7.5% |
| 3 | 8% |
| 4 | 7.1% |
| 5 | 7.3% |
| 6 | 7.7% |
| 7 | 8.9% |
| 8 | 7.8% |
| 9 | 7.3% |
| 10 | 7.6% |
| 11 | 12.2% |
| 12 | 10.2% |

November alone carries more than a fair month's share: the seasonal sales do the heavy lifting.

## Method

- Monthly review counts come from Steam's own review histogram, stored in full rather than as a rolling window.
- Discount history comes from IsThereAnyDeal; a month counts as discounted when that depth was live at least five days.
- Every game is normalised against itself, so large and small titles weigh the same.
- Reviews are a proxy for units, not units. Full estimation chain at https://residualplay.com/docs

Free to quote with a link back to https://residualplay.com