The Top 20 Rated Steam Games of 2024

[ZedClampet]

#		Name	%	Price	Rating	Release	Follows	Online	Peak
1.		MiSide		$14.99	96.77%	11 Dec	56,190	12,629	23,741
2.		Balatro	-10%	$13.49	96.75%	20 Feb	69,011	22,645	40,623
3.		WEBFISHING		$4.99	96.52%	11 Oct	27,978	1,677	24,085
4.		The WereCleaner		Free	96.23%	07 May	3,704	22	193
5.		Sheepy: A Short Adventure		Free	96.12%	06 Feb	5,944	54	358
6.		Satisfactory	-20%	$31.99	95.95%	10 Sep	367,919	20,458	186,158
7.		Black Myth: Wukong		$59.99	95.90%	20 Aug	1,293,286	49,616	2,415,714
8.		TCG Card Shop Simulator	-25%	$9.74	95.55%	15 Sep	59,447	5,961	53,453
9.		Fields of Mistria	-20%	$11.19	95.53%	05 Aug	92,250	1,638	12,452
10.		Paper Lily - Chapter 1		Free	95.48%	26 Jan	7,849	39	402
11.		20 Small Mazes		Free	95.47%	16 Feb	808	4	15,492
12.		Tiny Glade	-20%	$11.99	95.34%	23 Sep	158,052	1,018	10,692
13.		Crime Scene Cleaner	-20%	$15.99	95.33%	14 Aug	51,543	1,392	13,577
14.		Please, Touch The Artwork 2		Free	95.30%	19 Feb	1,530	7	365
15.		shapez 2	-25%	$18.74	95.26%	15 Aug	41,461	1,019	18,806
16.		Tactical Breach Wizards	-20%	$15.99	95.13%	22 Aug	46,527	264	4,761
17.		ATLYSS		$9.99	95.04%	22 Nov	36,497	1,692	10,803
18.		Blade and Sorcery		$29.99	95.03%	17 Jun	80,281	406	9,509
19.		Murders on the Yangtze River	-25%	$11.24	94.97%	31 Jan	19,877	233	4,964
20.		I Wani Hug that Gator!	-50%	$7.49	94.97%	14 Feb	7,082	39	759

I own 6 of those. A bunch I've never heard of, which isn't surprising since there were 19,000 games released on Steam this year.

Nearly 19,000 games released on Steam in 2024

You probably didn't play most of them.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[ZedClampet]

The ratings must just be the ratings from this year, perhaps, because Satisfactory has an overall rating of over 97 percent.

 

[isleepinabed]

Just one of these in my library.
Can't really take many conclusions from this table, I'm afraid.

I usually show a short Youtube clip when doing a presentation to interns that pertains to a definition of "quality" as Quality = Reality - Expectations
So if you have low expectations, something middling can give a high perception of quality. But if you have high expectations, a slight disappointment can affect your perception of quality.
Five of these are "free" games. Most of the others are lower-priced and only Wukong is full-priced (in a context of being a flagship game from China, and what that represents in terms of the user base from China supporting a national product). Might that have something to do with it?... More high profile releases are burdened with higher expectations and put more under scrutiny.

 

[ZedClampet]

Just one of these in my library.
Can't really take many conclusions from this table, I'm afraid.

I usually show a short Youtube clip when doing a presentation to interns that pertains to a definition of "quality" as Quality = Reality - Expectations
So if you have low expectations, something middling can give a high perception of quality. But if you have high expectations, a slight disappointment can affect your perception of quality.
Five of these are "free" games. Most of the others are lower-priced and only Wukong is full-priced (in a context of being a flagship game from China, and what that represents in terms of the user base from China supporting a national product). Might that have something to do with it?... More high profile releases are burdened with higher expectations and put more under scrutiny.

I think you can take something from it. I worked for almost 10 years in Quality Systems measuring customer sentiment, value, etc. I can say with certainty that the expectation of quality doesn't really drop that steeply from $70 to free, and in a lot of people, it doesn't drop at all. There are thousands of games on Steam that cost essentially nothing or are free that are rated very poorly and have endless angry user reviews.

$70 to free is not an exact 1 to 1, of course, and free is a completely different matter, but if you had more customer data, you could adjust it until it reached 1 to 1. But that was too long ago, and my brain is too poor these days for me to attempt to give good examples of things like satisfiers, hygiene factors, threshold attributes, delighters, etc. as they relate to games.

In any event, players always expect games to be good (with all that that means), and they rate the game accordingly. I've often seen free games with low scores and thought, "That's brutal", but that's they way it is, so I think we can at least assume that these games, which have significant numbers of reviews, are considered to be good games. Value is another beast altogether, but I would also assume people consider these games to be of good value, but I'm not sure how many gamers are value-conscious buyers.

 

[isleepinabed]

I think you can take something from it. I worked for almost 10 years in Quality Systems measuring customer sentiment, value, etc. I can say with certainty that the expectation of quality doesn't really drop that steeply from $70 to free, and in a lot of people, it doesn't drop at all. There are thousands of games on Steam that cost essentially nothing or are free that are rated very poorly and have endless angry user reviews.

$70 to free is not an exact 1 to 1, of course, and free is a completely different matter, but if you had more customer data, you could adjust it until it reached 1 to 1. But that was too long ago, and my brain is too poor these days for me to attempt to give good examples of things like satisfiers, hygiene factors, threshold attributes, delighters, etc. as they relate to games.

In any event, players always expect games to be good (with all that that means), and they rate the game accordingly. I've often seen free games with low scores and thought, "That's brutal", but that's they way it is, so I think we can at least assume that these games, which have significant numbers of reviews, are considered to be good games. Value is another beast altogether, but I would also assume people consider these games to be of good value, but I'm not sure how many gamers are value-conscious buyers.

I can see that. I think that simplification makes more sense in the service industry, and not as much with products.
Looking at those twenty from a distance though and it's a very heterogenous mix of games, from casual to hardcore, various pricepoints, developer origins, genres...
That's what's making it hard for me - I can't see any trend to the data

 

[ZedClampet]

I can see that. I think that simplification makes more sense in the service industry, and not as much with products.
Looking at those twenty from a distance though and it's a very heterogenous mix of games, from casual to hardcore, various pricepoints, developer origins, genres...
That's what's making it hard for me - I can't see any trend to the data

You are absolutely right in your assessment if you are trying to glean too much information from it. My only point was that you could at least assume the games were pretty decent, whatever that means. I wouldn't try to look for more than that. It's all over the place, and you'd need a lot more data. I didn't really post it for the sake of science but as something curious to consider, or perhaps for someone looking for games that people think well of.

 

[Zloth]

Zed, did you have that set to just your language when you checked?

Expectations are a big part for sure. Price is, too. When games start to go on sale for under $20, more and more people are going to start buying the game on a whim. "Hey, XCOM is about shooting aliens! I love that. Looks like an overhead camera, but Diablo is fun, so this should be, too." And the game gets a down vote because the reviewer didn't even bother to read the "turn based" game tag, never mind the description.

Bottom line: your rating will be better if you only convince people that will like your game to buy the game. I'm not so sure if your profits will be better, but the rating will be.

I'm very impressed that Satisfactory and Wukong got such high scores! Especially Wukong - it's hard to please that many people that much.

 

[ZedClampet]

Zed, did you have that set to just your language when you checked?

No, that's all games

 

[Zloth]

No, that's all games

I mean reviews. When you look at scores, Steam lets you see the scores for reviews in your own language or... oh wait. It looks like that option isn't there for searching, just on individual store pages! Doh! Never mind.

 

[JCgames]

If you look at VNs, HOB, and to a smaller degree retro style point and clicks, they almost always are rated much higher because the fans tend to game more for basic fun/joy, where they spen an evening or two playing and having a good time is the exact point of the hobby.

Compare that to the average game and they nit picking every little thing to death. Also smaller fan bases and people just wanting to enjoy the experience, verse already set to say it sucks from the instant the game take 30 seconds to load. I see people with 100s or 1ks of hours in games that say don't buy, the devs haven't got a clue, there game is horrible, and said it from day 1, so none of its the last patch that killed it, yet some how the people that never have a single nice thing to say plays it and nothing else. This baffles me more than anything.

The odd thing though, any game with a story typically has people that say it's horrible and then others say it's awesome, but for some reason vns and hobs also avoid that for the most part.


What does this all mean? I dunno but I'll post some examples if high rated ones for you tomorrow.