Steam’s Co-op Games Are Outshining Solo Play By A Wide Margin, Says New Report

Highlights

Co-op games on Steam have grown in popularity, outweighing solo play.
36% of Steam game units sold are co-op games, with titles like Palworld and Helldivers 2 leading sales.
Co-op games sell better than non-co-op games, with word of mouth and social media sharing driving interest.

We all know how video games are great for escaping into by not only offering a safe place away from the chaos of the world but also by offering countless rewards like completing fun tasks and endless unfiltered adventures that can be a complex process to undertake in real life.

Throughout the pandemic, gamers, and previous non-gamers, found video games a great way to contact others in times when human connection was severely severed, but it seems as though, since then, co-op games haven’t lost their appeal. According to a new report, co-op games on Steam have become increasingly more popular over the years, and have even steadily outweighed solo play.

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Rise Of The Co-Op Games

Taking a deep dive into Steam’s co-op games, Video Game Insights has conducted a report with pretty surprising results. The popularity of co-op has always been an aspect many gamers crave since the first video game to feature co-op play in 1973 with Pong Doubles, but to see this feature become even more beloved in recent years goes to show what PC players really want from their games now.

According to the report, only 6% of Steam games released in 2023 were co-op, but they make up 36% of the units sold, and even though COVID-19 saw a huge rise in co-op play, seeing 647 co-op games released on Steam, 2024 has beaten 2020 in co-op units sold. Titles such as Palworld have sold 19.1 million copies (46%) of co-op game sales so far this year, Helldivers 2 coming in at 11.4 million (28%), Content Warning with 2.4 million (6%) and Gray Zone Warfare at 1.4 million (3%).

106 co-op games have sold over 5 million units in their lifetime on Steam, making it a surprisingly attractive opportunity for larger publishers, and even the bottom 25% of co-op games still sell twice as well as the bottom 25% of other games. The report also found that word of mouth was a valuable aspect when it comes to co-op play because gamers want their friends to join them and also the ability to create fun content to share on social media.

When a game has co-op included, it will sell much better than games without this element, which should be an incentive for more developers to get in on this trend by listening to what players actually want and that’s to share their playtime with another.