Gacha (and Marvel Snap) have dominated Steam’s free-to-play category this year

The state of free-to-play games these days seems more precarious than ever. Whether it's the ruthless wars waged over the time of gamers, cutting edge developments in FOMO exploitation, or the growing air of Games as a Service (GaaS) fatigue, the health of the market can be hard to glean. However, thanks to some new data, it's clear that there is still plenty of blood left to squeeze from this digital stone.

Courtesy of GameDiscoverCo, rough estimates on revenue from new free-to-play releases on Steam, alongside their respective player counts, have been listed out for us all to see. This obviously doesn't include many of the free-to-play mainstays like Apex Legends and Counter Strike 2, but it does give us a look at the next wave of games in this space.

You may not be too surprised to see Gacha topping the charts thanks to Summoners War: Chronicles. Since its release on Steam, it has apparently accumulated $24,447,000 of gross Steam revenue. Despite its apparent reputation as a relatively free-to-play friendly game compared to some of the more egregious gacha games out there, it's clear that a huge portion of its player base has dropped some significant cash on the game with $17.87 average spend per player. Gacha games are built to make you want to essentially gamble, after all.

If you're not a fan of gacha, don't worry. Marvel Snap comes in at second place with a modern twist on some good ol' fashioned pack-based monetisation. We loved Marvel Snap on launch - and it's still a banger by most accounts - despite the addition of various new avenues for player spend. Some of these haven't exactly gone down well, but it's lead to the game sweeping in $19,378,000 gross revenue since the Steam release. This doesn't even count the mobile revenue!

Those are the two at the top, but there are some over wild games present on the top 50 earners. Tower of Fantasy - a game that seemingly had its two weeks in the spotlight for the vast majority of Western PC players, managed to suck $17,576,000 from Steam players who gave the game a go since its release. A sad note comes from Torchlight: Infinite - the latest release in a once beloved franchise - which has still been able to rake in $11,550,000 despite a generally negative reception.

All of these games, as well as Magic the Gathering: Arena's Steam release, Mobile Suit Gundam Battle Operation 2, and a few others have been able to outperform the Steam release of Overwatch 2. That game, which has seen a steady spread of controversy since its launch, was able to draw out $4,621,000. Not too shabby, especially considering the majority of players are still likely on Battle.Net.

So what does this tell us? Well, as pointed out by GameDiscoverCo, most of the top-grossing games in the top ten releases have mobile versions that may have played a big part in building up a userbase away from Steam. When you look at Tower of Fantasy or Marvel Snap for example, can go a long way in building hype around a Steam release. Then there's the global aspect of these releases, with a good number of the top earners drawing in a huge number of players from China. With that in mind, maybe the Blizard/NetEase fallout had a major impact on Overwatch 2's placement in the rankings?

Let us know what you think of this data below! Are you surprised by the popularity of certain games in the top 10?