Steam releases · Q4 2021

Who takes the attention in this window · releases grouped by the observed scale of their publisher

Q4 20211 Oct – 31 Dec 20212,954 releasesOND

Q3 2021 Now Q1 2022

Q4 2021 at a glance

In Q4 2021 (1 Oct – 31 Dec 2021), 2,954 games released on Steam, and 311 of them shipped with a playable demo. The most anticipated is Forza Horizon 5 (587,019 followers). Compared with the same window a year earlier (2,662 releases), it is 11 % busier. Data as of 2026-10-28.

window at a glance
Same window a year earlier
Releases	2,954
With a playable demo	311
Median followers, top 20 by demand	118,548
Free to play, of 2,847 with a known price	16 %

Mosaic ListPublishers

classreleasespeak playersmedianp90kept at 5w

Majorpublisher median 5,000+ reviews

21%

——too few

Largepublisher median 1,000–5,000

——too few

Midpublisher median 200–1,000

——too few

Smallpublisher median 50–200

——too few

Micropublisher median under 50

548

——too few

Self-publishedno external publisher

2,175

60%

——too few

Class is the observed scale of a publisher’s portfolio: the median review count of what they released over the last 36 months. Budgets are invisible to us, so these are not the industry’s AAA and AA labels.Peak players is the highest concurrent count since release. “Kept at 5w” compares the fifth week against the first-week peak, counting only releases with at least 20 concurrent players.Concurrent players are observed from 2026-07-19 onward. Releases before that date have no player columns, and that is a gap in our watching, not a zero.

inside Q4 2021

months

weeks

Game	Release	Followers
Forza Horizon 5	2021-11-08	587,019
Battlefield™ 2042	2021-11-19	352,489
Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition	2021-10-28	317,755
ICARUS	2021-12-03	276,666
Back 4 Blood	2021-10-12	248,184
Halo Infinite	2021-11-15	231,430
Poppy Playtime	2021-10-12	226,599
Goose Goose Duck	2021-10-03	135,024
Gunfire Reborn	2021-11-17	134,859
Inscryption	2021-10-19	132,368