As the Steam Winter Sale draws to an end, with thousands of deals ending in less than nine hours time, Valve has unexpectedly published its top 100 best sellers of 2016. While the company stopped short of disclosing exactly how much each title garnered in terms of gross revenue during the calendar year, it has provided categorizations to provide a general idea, specifically:
- Platinum: Games ranked 1 - 12 by gross revenue
- Gold: Games ranked 13 - 24
- Silver: Games ranked 25 - 40
- Bronze: Games ranked 41 - 100
However, it is worth noting that viewing the list on the Steam website randomizes the order in which games appear in their corresponding categories.
Interestingly, No Man"s Sky managed to make it into the platinum category despite a massive backlash from gamers in August with some managing to obtain refunds via Steam despite having played the game for 50 hours. Counter-strike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2 also attracted attention after Valve started cracking down on gambling websites that leveraged Steam"s trading system.
In terms of the second-tier best sellers for 2016, Team Fortress 2 showed that it still has some staying power along with an indication as to how lucrative the game"s "hat economy" remains, particularly when compared to the 2016 release of DOOM which sold one million copies in three months on Steam.
As far as silver-tiered games are concerned, Civilization V deserves a notable mention, originally released in 2010 and receiving a generous 75% discount in the Steam Winter Sale, despite its sequel, Civilization VI having been released in October 2016.
As far as the bronze category is concerned, a curious inclusion is the Steam Controller. While obviously not a game, it does highlight that there is some legitimate interest in the hardware peripheral designed to support the use of Steam"s Big Picture Mode, originally released in beta back in September 2012.
In any case, Valve"s 2016 best sellers list may provide some last minute inspiration for those who may have already assaulted their wallets over the holiday season to buy a few more titles not already in their Steam library.