Way more game makers are working on PC titles than ever, survey says – Ars Technica
80 percent of game devs are working on a PC project, up from 66 percent last year.
Four out of five game developers are currently working on a project for the PC, a sizable increase from 66 percent of developers a year ago. That’s according to Informa’s latest State of the Game Industry survey, which partnered with Omdia to ask over 3,000 game industry professionals about their work in advance of March’s Game Developers Conference.The 80 percent of developers working on PC projects in this year’s survey is by far the highest mark for any platform dating back to at least 2018, when 60 percent of surveyed developers were working on a PC game. In the years since, the ratio of game developers working on the PC has hovered between 56 and 66 percent before this year’s unexpected jump. The number of game developers saying they were interested in the PC as a platform also increased substantially, from 62 percent last year to 74 percent this year.The PC has long been the most popular platform for developers to work on in the annual State of the Game Industry survey, easily outpacing consoles and mobile platforms that generally see active work from anywhere between 12 to 36 percent of developer respondents, depending on the year. In its report, Informa notes this surge as a “passion for PC development explod[ing]” among developers, and mentions that while “PC has consistently been the platform of choice… this year saw its dominance increase even more.”The increasing popularity of PC gaming among developers is also reflected in the number of individual game releases on Steam, which topped out at a record of 18,974 individual titles for 2024, according to SteamDB. That record number was up over 32 percent from 2023, which was up from just under 16 percent from 2022 (though many Steam games each year were “Limited Games” that failed to meet Valve’s minimum engagement metrics for Badges and Trading Cards).While it’s hard to pinpoint a single reason for the sudden surge in the popularity of PC game development, Informa speculates that it’s “connected to the rising popularity of Valve’s Steam Deck.” While Valve has only officially acknowledged “multiple millions” in sales for the portable hardware, GameDiscoverCo analyst Simon Carless estimated that between 3 million and 4 million Steam Deck units had been sold by October 2023, up significantly from reports of 1 million Deck shipments in October 2022.That’s a sizable start for the nascent handheld PC gaming market, but it’s still a relative drop in the bucket compared to the nearly 2 billion worldwide PC gamers (of some stripe) estimated by DFC Intelligence or even the 39 million concurrent players Steam registered in December (not to mention over 100 million Switch consoles). An influx of a few million units of the Steam Deck (and its imitators) would seem unlikely to make such a sudden impact on the world of PC game development.Then again, the Steam Deck marks the first real opportunity for most gamers to play PC games away from a bulky desktop tower or slightly less bulky gaming laptop. The prospect of playing games on the couch, in bed, or even on a plane could be attracting more developers to a PC platform that can also handle advanced graphical effects on higher-end hardware (sorry, Nintendo Switch).Of course, there’s a chance this year’s PC gaming jump is just statistical noise. Informa’s survey is a self-selected sample from among the tens of thousands of attendees going to the Game Developers Conference, which is in itself a (relatively well-off) subset of the hundreds of thousands of professional and hobbyist game developers worldwide. While the self-reported platform numbers among that sample have not been very noisy in years past, all the major platforms (except for the Xbox Series X/S) saw at least a slight uptick between the 2024 and 2025 surveys, suggesting what might be an odd annual sample of developers.In any case, this year’s survey serves as yet another data point suggesting PC gaming is a large and still growing section of the industry, even as smartphones and consoles like the Switch continue to attract widespread interest from gamers. It’s worth keeping in mind as you eye the latest pricey offerings from Nvidia, for instance.Ars Technica has been separating the signal from
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