Study shows that co-op games on Steam are becoming increasingly popular

It's happened - unbelievable but true - that co-op games are becoming more and more popular. It's been almost ten days since we analyzed the Steam charts and came to the conclusion that competitive games are still very popular. As is often the case in the digital world, the opposite is quickly proven.

One of the latest studies shows that co-op games are becoming increasingly popular. This means that you probably don't want to be the only one fighting alone. Cooperation is fun... isn't it?

The market research team at Video Game Insights (VGI) has released a report on the continued success of co-op games. According to the report, the number of co-op games released on Steam has increased from 383 (2018) to 799 (2023), with the largest increase coming from 2019 to 2020 - from 388 to 647, most likely due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to VGI, Covid lockdown boosted co-op games, which were a means of maintaining some social output. After Covid, the trend was normalized, but is now coming back in 2024.

Only six percent of games released on Steam in 2023 (13,936 total) were co-op games, but they accounted for 36 percent of all units sold, or about 65.16 million out of 181 million. This year, co-op games even accounted for 46 percent of total sales (almost 40.8 million units), largely due to the success of Palworld, Helldivers 2, and Content Warning. VGI also counts Gray Zone Warfare (1.4 million units sold) among its co-op titles, although the game is essentially an extraction shooter with PvP and therefore doesn't necessarily fall into that category.

VGI's full results for co-op games released on Steam can be read here .