A recent analysis by gaming magazine Gamasutra has found that Steam games launches are going erm... full steam ahead. The headlining fact the magazine discovered was that during the first 20 weeks of 2014 there were more Steam games launched than during the whole of 2013.
Valve's major PC games distribution and matchmaking service has really grown from strength to strength. However, with the significantly bigger influx of games on the market aiming at PCs connected to the Steam service, it will ultimately become harder for developers to get their games noticed – no matter how fantastic they might be.
So with many more games launches is it going to be harder to sort the wheat from the chaff, or even see any wheat there at all? GameSpot reports that Valve has been implementing community tools to help rank and chart games to get quality wares noticed; user reviews, tags and reports can be made about games available on the platform. Also the default front page store view has been changed to 'Top Sellers' rather than 'New Releases' (see above).
Gamasutra compiled a chart comparing this year so far with the two previous years, you can see it below. Another chart shows that there were almost 200 games launched on Steam last month compared with an average of under 50 per month from July 2012 to August 2013.
It is said that the launch of Steam Greenlight has spurred the amount of new games launching. The acceleration is expected to continue with Steam becoming more open; it is intended that any publisher will be able to use Steam as a store front in the future as it becomes closer to becoming a 'self-publishing platform'.
