Valve has become one of the biggest brands in gaming ever since the creation of its digital distribution platform called Steam. Now, Steam has just revealed its greatest hits.
The multi-billion-dollar software distribution branch of Valve has just revealed its top 100 best sellers of 2016. The selection was categorized into four brackets platinum, gold, silver and gold based on the revenues generated by each game.
In the bronze category, a couple of big budget titles were included such as "Mafia 3" which has an estimated production cost of more than 200 million based on an estimate by Gamezone. Another big budget game on the list is "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare," "Far Cry 4," " Street Fighter V" and "Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain." Some indie games were also part of the list such as "Don't Starve Together;" " Life is Strange," and "Astronner."
"Sid Meir's Civilization V," "Far Cry Primal," and "Deus Ex Mankind Divided" are some of the big budget titles included in the silver category. The list is mostly comprised of indie games such as "Rust," "SubNautica," and "Cities Skyline."
The gold category features most of 2016's known bestsellers even in consoles. Titles like "Call of Duty: Black Ops 3," "Doom," "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Siege" and "Rise of the Tomb Raider." The indie games like "Stardew Valley" and "H1Z1 King of the Kill."
The platinum category features some of the highest grossing games on Steam. This list is a combination of both Free-to-Play, Indie and big budget titles. One of the entries which dominates in this category was considered a flop by most gamers, the game "No Man's Sky" is one of the surprise entries in this bracket.
The hype created by this indie game has fueled its upward trend in sales by the time it was released. After a few weeks, the game was criticized due to its false promises and advertising. The game, however, received a huge update which is said to fix the bugs and errors in the game.
The patch was praised by some of the industry's critics. Kotaku's article mentioned that "If this update is anything to go by, 'No Man's Sky' may gradually become fortified over time as Hello Games adds more systems, features, and modes. It's a confident step forward." In the end, Helio Games was able to pull "No Man's Sky" back from oblivion by listening to its audience.
