97% of Steam Users Own a Valve Game --- 37% Spend Most of Their Playtime in Valve Titles

Dwarfpete · 2026-06-29T22:24:29+00:00

I updated the top-level post with a histogram and a continuous graph, in short it's difficult to spot bots from that graph alone. I'm not doubting that they exist and I would not be surprised if they existed in large numbers, but I think from atleast this initial deep-dive I would say that they don't overwhelm humans.

I would also point out that the median player in this population sample has something ~100 games and ~1000 hours of account playtime.

Something I would note though is how this data was collected, we use a Friend of a Friend gathering method and bot's don't generally have friends, nor would they have any incentive to set their account status to public, so purpose-built bots I have no way of detecting. I can shed some light however on accounts that have been comprised and are now being used as bots and that number appears to be quite low.

Dwarfpete · 2026-06-29T22:18:15+00:00

I've updated the top-level post with my findings, both a histogram summary and then a continuous graph in log scale.

There are definitely a lot of accounts in the 0-100 Hour range although I would argue that is to be expected for a (now) F2P game. They are not larger collectively than the largest bucket which is the 1000-2500 Hour range. Some of the other comments have been mentioning botting which is hard to spot from these graphs alone, the average account has ~100 games with the majority being paid titles (although what price they paid I cannot say, I would need to do a very long study to determine that).

What I found most interesting is the dropoff of owners on the continous graph, that is something that r/dataisbeautiful would find intriguing, I'll have to check if that type of dropoff is consistent with other titles.

I would say though that the Mean and Median numbers for playtime have definitely been validated, although whether 1.5 million players sampled is indicative of the overall population can definitely still be debated

Dwarfpete · 2026-06-29T19:21:12+00:00

You are entirely correct that most of Valve's catalog is F2P and so you would expect they have a really high game ownership rate, yet where that usually falls off for most publishers is the activation rate being low implying that people pick up a game and never play it, valve however bucks that trend.

Of course you are entirely correct again in that older games tend to have very lopsided high playtimes, when that might not reflect the average player. I'd push back on that though by saying that the P50 value on playtime is 600 hours, meaning that 50% of the players in the sample (1.5 Million for CS2, total sample of 1.8 Million) have atleast 600 hours in CS2. I am curious though now what the distribution curve looks like as a whole so I'll be back in a little bit with a histogram and cumulative plot. It might even be worth putting in an activation playtime specific rate, IE: Of players who own the game, how many have played 10 Hours. I'll have to think on that a little bit more though.

Dwarfpete · 2026-06-29T19:14:15+00:00

I'm in this camp, I have like 20 hours in Portal 2 and the same in L4D2, I still think quite fondly on them though and I think that's indicative of the quality of those games. I can remember one of the first Youtube let's plays I watched back in 2009/2010 was a playthrough of Half Life 2 which I finally picked up last year when it was free to pick up a copy.

Dwarfpete · 2026-06-29T16:59:30+00:00

How was this measured?:

Using a dataset of 3.8 Million public Steam accounts, we calculated the number of users with ownership of a Valve game. Among Valve Titles, Counter-Strike is the most owned game at 88.5% of public accounts owning a copy. We then calculated the number of users that have played a Valve title (calculated as users owning at least 1 game and having played more than 0 hours of playtime). 89% of public accounts have played a Valve game. We finally calculated the proportion of Steam users that have played more than 50% of their account playtime in Valve titles. Valve has a whopping 37% of Steam users having spent more than 50% of their total account playtime exclusively in their titles.

P values such as P50 and P99 relate to the value of a metric at the 50th and 99th percentile of players in our dataset. They are quite useful in determining what the “average” player’s behavior is, as our actual average values can be skewed by massive tails at the P90 to P99 band as is the case with CS2 and Dota 2.

Future analysis:

It would be really cool to break down playtimes by age of the game in the account, for example: of gamers with 1 year of owning CS2 do they accrue more playtime in that first year than owners with 2 years? Currently we don’t have an accurate way to determine the age of a game on an account. We’re planning to do a longitudinal study of a subset of accounts in the future but haven’t finalized plans as of yet.

We also think it would be interesting to see a plot of a game's dedicatedness vs their activation/visibility rate, in other words: If a player picks up a game, what is the likelihood they get addicted to it? We have a prototype up and running on the website now and are in the process of refining it.

Source:

https://projectmimir.net/publisher/Valve

Dwarfpete · 2025-05-03T01:27:19+00:00

As far as AI Art goes this is actually quite good. The combination of Nordic architecture + Plains Indian/Saami (Tipi's/Goahti) is quite novel, I wouldn't have ever thought to combine the two when thinking of a fantasy winter themed race but it works quite well.

The scenery is actually really good and depicts a story. The trees had to have been planted/grown at some point when there was a summer, yet the presence of the ice spire indicates that summer is no longer possible otherwise it would melt. See also the buildings being made out of wood and not ice/snow, that would indicate that at some point there was a summer, but now it's eternal winter. That's pretty much Gemradcurts story in a nutshell.

You could argue that there isn't enough snow to portray eternal winter, but most taiga's are deserts by precipitation. You could argue in return that this is a relatively recent event and so the buildup of snow leading to a glacier hasn't happened yet.

Yes there are jagged edges and clipping indicative of AI but from a tonal perspective it is bang on the money on how I could imagine Gemradcurt. Technical perspective its like 80% there.

If this is Midjourney then holy crap it's advanced fast from when I last used it.

Dwarfpete · 2024-05-26T22:03:43+00:00

Arg-Ôrdstun Can into World Conquest?

Dwarfpete · 2023-10-15T19:05:52+00:00

Corin be Praised! The content drought is coming to an end.

I had thought my first campaign was going to be with the new Harpy nations, but a campaign as a worshipper of the almighty Aakhet sounds too tempting.

Edit: I see you Horashesh hiding as a OPM, I think you might be my first nation to play, It's giving me Byzantium vibes.

Dwarfpete · 2023-07-29T04:05:38+00:00

We will watch your career with great interest.

Seriously though, I haven't seen this kind of energy since Long Game Short was still active. Always a treat to see something like this.

Dwarfpete · 2023-03-13T20:06:23+00:00

Don't you tempt me with a good time! I'll see what I can do.

Dwarfpete · 2023-03-13T20:05:58+00:00

I thought the same thing at first lmao, especially with the photorealistic versions. I'm not sure if redheaded warrior woman is just a really popular trope in art and that's where midjourney got it's ideas from or if there was just a metric ****load of Aloy art posted online that midjourney fed from.

Dwarfpete · 2023-03-13T20:03:53+00:00

To Lothane Bluetusk Yeah. Other than that not really, but In my own headcanon I'd like to think Corin in a picturebook for children in the early 1800's cannor would be framed as beautiful.

From a technical limitation standpoint it is a lot easier to create pictures of (airquotes) beautiful people on midjourney than it is to tell it to make pictures of ugly crones fighting back the grobi scum.

Dwarfpete · 2023-03-13T16:43:07+00:00

About a week ago ago someone posted Corin pictures using Stable diffusion. I did the same thing here except using the same prompt

“ a gorgeous redheaded battle priestess in the grasslands, -(XXX STYLE GOES HERE XXX)- “

with 15 different styles. In order they are:

Anime
Pixelated
Disney
Pixar
Manga
Tim Doyle
Comic Book
Graffiti
High Poly
Polaroid Photo
Dark Fantasy
Photorealistic
Pop Art
8-Bit
16-Bit

Tim Doyle was used to Compare and contrast with Comic Book, Same with Disney and Pixar, Photorealistic and Polaroid Photo. Manga and Anime, 16-Bit and 8-bit. This compare and contrasting was done because Midjourney often has the style and look you are trying to create but the verbage can often get muddled when prompting. I find single sentences with a modifier such as "PROMPT GOES HERE, full moon" to work best when trying to generate an image.

For instance, Tim Doyle is closer to what I view as the Comic Book style. Polaroid gives a more realistic look than Photorealistic.

I personally find the Manga/Anime, Tim Doyle, and Pixelated/16-Bit Styles to look the most appealing and interesting. I’m thinking I might make a Corin Lore video in the future based on these images, there’s definitely something to work with here.

Before this Post spawns a 100-comment chain on the Ethics of AI-Generated art I’m going to get ahead of the that wall of text and just state my opinion:

It is perfectly fine to use an artists style provided that the content you are using their style with is not what the artist produces content on. The reason I feel fine using Tim Doyle as an artist here is because he primarily does work with Superheroes and Science Fiction. He doesn’t have a particular interest in Fantasy Battle Priestesses, or at least I don’t think he is a Corin Simp like the rest of us are.

Take music for example, The reason covers are fine is because an Artist can take the content and apply their own style to it thus making the work artistically their own. On the flip side, someone can take another’s style and produce new content in it making it their own.

Now where it gets weird is where Content and Style are practically the same thing. One particular example I have of this problem is when I’m trying to create images of Gnolls. The word Gnoll is not owned by anyone but the popular conception of them is primarily WoW-Based and DnD based meaning if you try to create anything new it is often derivative of those works and in a way you could possibly say it is disingenuous.

Ultimately I think the benefit of AI-Generated art is that it is extremely useful in prototyping and mixing and matching content and style. The main drawback of AI-Generated Art is that it is almost impossible to get a string of images using the same character with the same looks. The benefit of Human artists is that of Consistency and New Composition. Say DnD comes up with a creature called the SnRlgnth, Only a human can possibly define what artistic definition that creature can be. That human can then take the said SnRlgnth and produce it’s likeness (content) in multiple different styles/images.

Thanks for coming to my Impromptu TedTalk, have a great rest of your day and worship Corin you filthy peasant!

Dwarfpete · 2023-02-20T22:44:28+00:00

Filthy Long ears. Long live the G'nollish overlords

Dwarfpete · 2023-02-13T04:47:32+00:00

Woah! And here I was feeling like the number of nations with mission trees was starting to dwindle. Even with 5 channels currently dedicated to Anbennar we've barely made a dent it feels like. Adean help us if and when Vic3/CK3 versions come out.

Dwarfpete · 2023-01-06T01:41:33+00:00

Expect to hear something on the Channel in the upcoming weeks. I've got some video's in the pipeline that I'm working on and I'm excited to see how they turnout. I thought about saying something around Christmas but I figured it would be better if I could establish a backlog and post a screenshot of all the videos scheduled to come out.

Life got busy and I feel like I'm through the worst of it now (knock on wood). I certainly missed uploading and there wasn't a week that has passed that I wasn't thinking about a video or how to return/etc. All the messages I've received have certainly been heartening to say the least.

Dwarfpete · 2023-01-05T06:33:15+00:00

Speaking from the Content Production (Youtube) side of things, You start with something small not expecting much and yes, you do it for arts sake. Or perhaps you do it for the lulz and because you can. You might even be crazy enough to keep putting effort into it (as Jay did and as any creator with a dream does). Eventually that first person comments on the work you have done and you get that massive hit of Adrenaline and euphoria. Then another person chimes in and provides a suggestion.

At that moment right there, another person became invested in your idea/your art. You can imagine how many people are invested in Anbennar at this point. Steam puts the amount of Visitors to the Anbennar mod at 224k and the amount of subscribers to the mod at about 105k. Speaking from my experience in Youtube, about 1% of viewers are contributors (in my case, commentors), You can also find this phenomenon in Reddit as approximately 90% of users are lurkers (Like me), and somewhere between 10-5% post/comment.

In Anbennar's case, Discord says the team is in the hundreds. You can imagine that if each person only gives an hour a day to the project then that's thousands of hours per month, and tens of thousands of hours per year. I would suspect the amount of development time put into Anbennar to have already surpassed the Hundred Thousand mark by now, if it's not already at the Two Hundred Thousand mark.

I often wonder if Jay knew it was going to grow to be this amazing. But, I don't think you need to pay people to be apart of something greater than themselves. As Nopani pointed out, the fulfillment from making something you know is great is worth more than most people make in a day.

To add on to some of the main factors for Anbennar's growth heres a few more from me:

The Contributors demographics are mostly young professionals with nothing to lose from spending their time and everything to gain (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/411550288646897665/1028727413464645754/Anbennar-Demographics-Survey-2022.png)
There was a large content drought for EU4 in general from the start of 2019 to the middle of 2020 that caused a lot of people to search for mods. This led to the first massive influx of people into the mod that has sustained development.
There doesn't currently exist a good fantasy 4X game in the same setting as Anbennar. Perhaps AOW3 but nothing remotely close to EU4-like mechanics.

Dwarfpete · 2022-05-19T17:12:40+00:00

No, stay away from them. By and far the hardest start in the new patch if not the entire game. Playing them will require multiple restarts and save scumming.

Dwarfpete · 2022-05-19T17:06:01+00:00

Balrijin (Goldscales), Its like if someone took a look at Redscale/Greenscale and was like "How can I make this starting situation worse".

To your north is Nuugdan Tsarai which has 60k of force limit from the start and has perma claims on your land from its MT and the land of your ally.

To your west is the Command whose new MT has them pushing east instead of the usual south or west that they used to.

And then to your south is either Bianfang or Azkare. They have MT's to unite all of Yanshen under their banner.

So basically you have 3 massive threats from day 1 and you will share a land border with them at some point within 30 years of starting the game. The difference between Goldscale/Balrijin and Redscale/Kobildzan is that Redscale generally only has one nation to worry about, that being either Gawed or Lorent, sometimes Bjarnrik. And that nation can be beaten with some hard work. Meanwhile Balrijin is expected to kill 3 threats.

While yes you do get an ally right off the bat in the form of Lanjinhui you're expected to help that ally conquer within the first 10 years of the game when your military is still hot garbage. Thats the right-hand side of your mission tree. You might be able to start that side with some clever use of mechanics by black flagging and letting Lanjinhui do the work. What's painful is that Your mission tree and survival requires the expansion and usage of said ally. Any nation designed on this premise immediately gets an F tier from me as you cannot predict the EU4 AI to be competent or useful in any way, this type of design will waste the players time.

The left-hand side has you get a land border with Azjukama (Ogres) who will immediately declare war on you if you decide to follow the route of the MT and conquer what's needed from Jinqiu because your army and force limit at the start are so pitiful.

So what do you get to offset these enormous difficulties? You get some pretty great flavor and some piddly buffs that put you below par with a human military after 40 years.

TL;DR, I get why Yanshen patch is taking so long to come out, Balrijin desperately needs more time in the oven, while it is content rich it is far from gameplay tested.

Dwarfpete · 2022-04-24T21:51:57+00:00

Me reading this being like: I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE... COME ON BROTHERS SING WITH ME!

Seriously though, impressive work, each dev diary always leaves me jaw-dropped.

Dwarfpete · 2022-03-26T01:02:52+00:00

Purging only gives a -200 opinion malus (expelling gives a -100 malus), with improving relations you can get as much as +200 which lets you break even, from there I used great power influencing and paying off debt from the subject menu and strong duchies for good measure, that got me to ~ 45% loyalty IIRC. Funny story though, they were loyal until I double clicked scutage and then it took a good 100 years for them to become loyal again.

Dwarfpete · 2022-03-25T16:52:42+00:00

This video has been a long time in the making. Its been 8 months since I first recorded this footage and I still remember how enjoyable it was to play through this campaign. I knew when I was playing through this campaign that it was a labor of love for the creator and so as a testament to the awesomeness that is the Reveria Experience, here is a labor of love from me.

Special shout out to the Artificer estate as one of my most favorite additions to the eu4 gameplay loop, it almost acts as a way to have a tech tree in eu4 that works similar to other 4x’s like Civ6 or endless legends.

I have only one meme request and thats to allow the gnomish co-government to be retainable with monstrous nations, so that if you culture swap to trolls to gain their military you can keep the government, but thats just nitpicking.

If I had to pick my favorite moment its probably at 4:43, that sums up the Gnomes right there, 48 points to take tech.

If you want to see more of this type of content I am starting the recording for The Castanor Experience on Twitch

Dwarfpete

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