In brief: Valve has just revealed some interesting statistics about its products: a new Charts page showing the most-played games on the Steam Deck, and how many users are playing Steam games with a controller. In the case of the former, the data is updated daily across a rolling time window covering the past seven days of stats, though it doesn’t include actual player numbers.
Elden Ring has been the top Steam Deck game over the last week, likely a result of the new Shadow of the Erdtree expansion. It’s followed by Stardew Valley and card game Balatro, two titles well suited for Valve’s handheld. Baldur’s Gate 3 is next, followed by Kingdom Hearts: HD 1.5 & 2.5 Remix, strangely.
It’s also possible to see the top games over the past month – Elden Ring is still top – and past year. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the leader over the last 12 months.
The vast majority of titles on the list are Steam Deck verified, though some are down as being “Playable,” such as GTA V, Helldivers 2, and Red Dead Redemption 2.
Good morning! We just shipped a new Steam Charts page featuring the top-played games on Steam Deck. This list is updated daily, and you can explore the top 100 games on Deck by week, month, or year – check it out here:https://t.co/JclnxE5LEp pic.twitter.com/5bGDaWLR3c
– Steam Deck (@OnDeck) June 27, 2024
One would normally assume that the charts are based solely on the number of people playing a game, but that isn’t the only metric Valve is using to determine its position. Company employee Lawrence Yang told The Verge that it uses a combination of unique users and “interest.”
“Hades 2 has only been out for a month, but so many Steam Deck players have it as one of their top played games for the entire year, that it was lifted in the rankings,” Yang explained.
The chart also includes each game’s current price. With the Steam Summer sale having started yesterday, many of the titles are discounted by 10% to 95% (in the case of Civilization VI).
In addition to the Steam Deck chart, Valve revealed how many users are playing games on its platform using a controller. It notes that daily average controller use has tripled from 5% in 2018 to 15% today, and 42% of these controller sessions are using Steam Input.
As for which controllers people are using, Xbox controllers are the most popular (58%), followed by PlayStation controllers (26%), while 10% are on Steam Decks.
