Steam’s latest survey results suggest an increase in Japanese users

Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-04-14 12:29 JST)

Valve has released the results of their Steam Hardware & Software Survey: March 2022. This survey is conducted by Valve monthly, and the results are based on various bits of data gathered from users who opt into it through the Steam client.

The survey spans a wide range of categories from OS versions to graphics cards being used by Steam users. There’s also a language category which tracks what languages are being used. For March 2022, English users made up 36.11%, followed by Simplified Chinese at 26.23%. It’s also worth noting the percentage of Japanese users, which now make up 2.34% of users ranking in at the number 8 spot. While not significant at a glance, it’s actually the highest share it’s ever been.

In past surveys, Japanese users hovered around 1%: 1.10% in March of 2019, 1.29% in March of 2020, and 1.72% in March of 2021. And as of March 2022, it now stands as high as it’s ever been at 2.34%. Looking at this, we can see the share of Japanese users increasing in recent years. It also shows a higher growth rate than other languages. Japanese was the 12^th most used language on Steam in March of 2017, and has since passed Polish, Korean, and Turkish as of March 2022.

Overall, the number of Steam users has been increasing. In January of this year, Steam even reached a record 29,198,370 concurrent users. And within that overall increase appears to be an increase in Japanese players. With the number of big titles releasing on the platform increasing, the number of games that support Japanese increasing, and the difficulty of buying a PS5 possibly driving players to look for alternatives, there are likely a lot of factors playing into it.

In recent years, Steam sales have also been trending on Twitter in Japan, showing a swell in excitement around PC gaming and leaving no doubt that it’s starting to permeate in the country.

If Japanese users increase, the market will be recognized as larger, leading to even more games supporting Japanese. If that happens, Steam will become an even better platform for gamers in Japan. Here’s to hoping the Steam Deck launches in Japan soon.