Steam's 2023 Year in Review breaks down exactly how you blew the past 12 months on videogames
2023 is almost at an end, and if you find yourself wondering what you've done with yourself over the past 365 days, the Steam Year in Review is here to fill you in with a rundown of the games you played, the achievements you earned, and other bits of gaming-related trivia.
Of course, this likely isn't the whole story: Most of us have spent at least a little time horsing around in games on GOG, the Epic Store, and whatever other online storefronts you frequent. But we all spend a lot of time on Steam, and so for the average person this is the real tale of the tape.
Steam's Year in Review page covers covers pretty much everything of note, from the games you played the most over the year to how you compare to the median Steam user, the percentage of new releases versus older stuff you got into, and even minutiae like how many new friends you added, badges you earned, guides you've written, and more.
There are even graphs showing when you committed to your top games: I was big on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt through April and May, for instance, got sucked into System Shock through June and July, discovered Pentiment in August, fell into Atomic Heart in October, and wrapped up the year with The Talos Principle 2—which, for the record, I'm still playing.
For those committed to complete accuracy, note that the Year in Review obviously comes up a little short of a full year, covering everything you've played from January 1 to December 14, and it doesn't include any playtime accrued when you were offline, because you had Steam in offline mode or your internet was crapped out for one reason or another. It also excludes "non-game software," as well as any time spent in games "that are unreleased, in preload, in prelease, or disabled." Personally I don't think that level of precision is necessary in a fun year-end roundup—we're not discovering penicillin here—but if you're daring to compare with your Steam friends, I suppose it's best to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Speaking of sharing, there's a button for quick-and-easy stats posting on social media (you'll need to have your Steam profile privacy set to either public or "friends only" to use it) or you can just clip an image if you want to put something up manually. Here's me:
The one thing I find odd in my stats is that according to the spider graph, I sunk a lot of time into horror games.
Aside from a brief diversion into Iron Lung (which, by the way, is excellent), I don't recall playing any horror games on Steam in 2023. System Shock is kinda horror-ish, I suppose, but I wouldn't call it a horror game in any meaningful sense. Talos Principle 2, Jusant, Gold Club Wasteland, I Commissioned Some Bunnies? That's a definite "no" across the board. Such is the magic of Steam store tags, I suppose.
In some cases, though, the chart seems dead on. Here, for instance, is the graph for PC Gamer's resident city builder-survival expert Chris Livingston. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect:
To check out your own stats, head over to store.steampowered.com/replay. If you're curious how your Steam games came together in 2022, there's an option to cast back to that, too. And since we're here, don't forget that the 2023 Steam Winter Sale is set to begin on December 21—we'll let you know when it kicks off.