Steam Game Releases Set To Beat Yearly Record By End Of October

Steam Is Officially Set To Break A Huge Record For The Seventh Consecutive Year Published Oct 2, 2026, 3:28 AM EDT Sam Woods is TheGamer’s Senior Reporter. He’s been in games journalism since 2020 and has undertaken a variety of roles in that time. These have included roles such as SEO Editor, Managing Editor at DualShockers, and Global Head of Gaming, and he's also been seen on the BBC. He was promoted to the Senior Reporter position in 2025 following a series of high-quality reports and exclusives for TheGamer. Since 2020, Sam has written over 3,000 articles and specializes in telling the stories of the people behind the games. He’s interviewed the biggest game directors, some of the industry’s top talents, told the stories of how indie games came to be, and spoken to players about what really makes them tick. He’s also interviewed some of the world’s biggest musical artists to find out how the medium has inspired their work, and TV and Film actors about their roles in video game adaptations. He even hosted a PAX panel in 2021 and made a documentary in 2024 surrounding the creation of a Disney game. Alongside this, Sam focuses on breaking news. He got the scoop on Perfect Dark’s cancellation, provided context on some AI drama, and revealed that Lady Dimitrescu’s actress would love to step back into the character’s giant shoes. These articles have been picked up by the biggest gaming sites, including IGN, GameSpot, and PC Gamer. He also loves to dive into the numbers behind the games. Sam’s journey in games journalism has taken him all over the world. He’s covered Gamescom in Germany, Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, and Tokyo Game Show in Japan, each on three occasions. He’s been learning Japanese since 2024 with the intention of identifying and translating Japanese-language news and bringing it to English-language audiences first, something he’s done countless times. Sam’s first review was 2020’s Battletoads reboot, and he’s since reviewed games in The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Pokemon franchises. Game releases are growing at an exponential rate. For six years in a row, Steam has seen the number of titles launching on its platform increase, with yearly releases more than doubling since 2020. That release schedule has shown no sign of slowing down this year either—in fact, it's rapidly increased once again—and by the end of October, more games will have been released in 2026 than in 2025. Steam Is On Track To Beat 2025's Release Record By The End Of This Month I'm reluctant to say game development is getting easier for a pair of reasons: 1. I'm not a game developer and 2. We've seen the struggles that major studios have faced over the last few years, often resulting in game cancellations, staff layoffs, and even studio closures. The rise of smaller indie games, particularly in the "friendslop" genre, plus tools like generative AI (boooo), have, however, likely contributed to the number of games being released—and it's only growing. According to SteamDB, 2025 saw 21,268 games released on the Valve-owned platform. That was up almost 3,000 from 2024, which saw 18,452 games released. 2024 was up over 4,000 from 2023, which was up almost 2,000 from 2022. You see a pattern developing. 2026 is set to be another bumper year, and it's going to beat 2025's record with two months remaining. Up until October 1, 20,220 games had been released on Steam, a little under 1,000 fewer than the previous year. That's with three months left. According to Games-Stats, a further 1,156 games are scheduled for release in October, meaning by the end of the month the 2026 total will be 21,376, making it another record-breaking year. November will likely see significantly fewer releases, 914 according to Game-Stats, as games scramble to get out of the way of Grand Theft Auto 6, but the record will have long fallen by then. For context, 1,751 games were released in November 2025. Below, you can see the year-by-year breakdown of Steam releases: Year Number Of Games Released On Steam 2006 70 2007 135 2008 242 2009 380 2010 275 2011 281 2012 303 2013 436 2014 1,712 2015 2,820 2016 4,647 2017 6,925 2018 8,863 2019 8,059 2020 9,634 2021 11,212 2022 12,237 2023 14,023 2024 18,452 2025 21,268 2026 20,220* By mid-last year, one in five games admitted to using generative AI during development, a number that has likely only snowballed since then. The latest figure suggested that roughly 31 percent used the technology in development this year, certainly a key contributor to the increase in releases. As more games come out, I am here begging for less. I have managed to complete a grand total of six this year, and I'm working my way through a seventh (Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave). I have a backlog which, at this point, is frankly ridiculous, and it never seems to get any shorter. Maybe we just take a year off from releasing new games to let everybody catch up. Brand Valve Original Release Date September 12, 2003 Original MSRP (USD) N/A Weight N/A Hardware Versions Steam