Steam's top sellers of 2018 were a mix of new, recent, and free-to-play titles. — AFP Relaxnews
PC gaming platform Steam has released a selection of tiered lists recapping 2018's milestone achievers, with free-to-play titles Dota 2 and Warframe among the digital retailer's highest earners alongside PUBG, Grand Theft Auto V, Rocket League, The Elder Scrolls Online and more.
Three games released in 2018 made it into Steam's annual Platinum tier of highest-grossing titles: action adventure Far Cry 5, creature-hunting challenge Monster Hunter World, and Ancient Greek immersion Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
The 12-strong tier also featured 2017 bestseller PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which has released temporary progression-boosting passes for additional maps Sanhok and Vikendi, both of which were made available this year.
Likewise, each of the other Platinum-tier games have been generating revenue by way of significant expansions, smaller cosmetic purchases, or virtual currencies.
Hence the presence of retail games Grand Theft Auto V, The Elder Scrolls Online, Rocket League, Rainbow Six Siege and Civilization VI.
Dota 2 and Warframe generate the entirety of their income from such payments; Counter-Strike: Global Offensive joined them as a free-to-play title in early December.
Another 88 games were sorted according to revenue performance into Gold, Silver, and Bronze categories.
Steam also provided revenue-based perspectives on top month-by-month releases, a Platinum-to-Silver collection of graduates from an intense Early Access development process, and a Platinum-to-Bronze ranking of Virtual Reality games and applications (Steam collaborated with HTC in developing the HTC Vive headset).
Ten games were shown to have recorded over 100,000 simultaneous players at one point or another during the year: CS:GO, Dota 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Monster Hunter World, Path Of Exile, PUBG, Rainbow Six: Siege, Realm Royale, Team Fortress 2, and Warframe.
Both Dota 2 and CS:GO, as well as Team Fortress 2, are developed and published by Steam store creator and operator Valve Corp.
The computer game edition of Fortnite is absent, distributed through its own publisher's website, Epic Games. Similarly, FIFA 19, The Sims 4 and Battlefield V are exclusive to the Electronic Arts computer games platform.
As part of a year-end sale that lasts until Jan 3, Steam also provided sections to display the most popular games played with gamepads: the official Steam controller, Microsoft's Xbox controllers, Sony's PlayStation controllers, and the Nintendo Switch's Switch Pro controller. – AFP Relaxnews
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