Steam’s list of the top-selling games of 2019 ranks the top 12 highest-grossing games of the year, including old favorites and a few surprise newcomers. In a time dominated by “live service” games, only one of the listed titles does not offer some form of multiplayer.
Despite the success of single-player titles in 2018 - such as God of War, which sold 5 million copies in its first month - 2019 solidified the place of the “games as service” model in the future of the games industry. Epic Games’ headline-grabbing, black hole-filling Fortnite Season 2 launch caught the attention of more than 4 million concurrent Twitch viewers, proving even taking a game offline for maintenance could be turned into an interesting event with the live service model. It was seen as the future of AAA gaming in 2018, and 2019 realized that future, keeping many of these games at (and introducing new ones to) the top of Steam’s sales charts.
According to Steam, the games in the 2019 Top Sellers list are not ordered by their exact rank in the list, but the overall list is divided into four tiers which denote those games’ positions relative to the others. The top tier, “Platinum,” includes the 12 highest-grossing games of the year: Rainbow Six Siege, Monster Hunter: World, Total War: Three Kingdoms, Dota 2, Warframe, The Elder Scrolls Online, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Civilization 6, Grand Theft Auto 5 (and GTA Online), PUBG, Destiny 2, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Sekiro, which won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2019, is the only one of the 12 best-sellers not to include some form of multiplayer.
Steam’s top sellers list includes game sales, in-game purchases, and DLC, which explains some of the older titles’ appearances on the list. Monster Hunter: World’s Iceborne expansion likely contributed to its position, as did Civilization 6’s Gathering Storm and The Elder Scrolls Online’s Elseweyr expansions. Destiny 2 is a somewhat surprising addition, as it only came to Steam with the Shadowkeep expansion launch in October, which temporarily shot the game to Steam’s number one best-selling spot. Besides the new titles (Sekiro and Total War) most of the other games on the list and, to a certain extent, ESO and Destiny 2, are older games which likely earned their spots based on continued microtransactions, season passes, and smaller expansion sales.
This success is hard for publishers to overlook, meaning many upcoming games in long-running series could also ditch the one-and-done model, instead adopting a live service strategy. Comments from a Halo franchise executive earlier this year suggest Halo Infinite could be a live service, and the next Battlefield game will be a live service, despite Battlefield 5’s frequent update stumbles. It seems games will continue to diverge into two categories: singular, curated experiences (like Sekiro and Death Stranding) which typically earn critical acclaim, and live services (like Destiny 2 and Fortnite) which, according to Steam, are the ones who make the big bucks.
Next: The Death and Rebirth of Single Player Games In 2017
Source: Steam
