Valve Confirms: Chinese-Speaking Steam Users Surpass English-Speaking Users in 2024
During the recent Game Developers Conference (GDC), Valve confirmed an important piece of information about Steam: as of 2024, Chinese has overtaken English as the most used language on the platform.
This topic had been mentioned earlier, but now there is an official confirmation from Valve, the company behind Steam.
China Leads on Steam
Valve@GDC2025: “33.7% of Steam Users have Simplified Chinese set as their Primary Language in 2024, 0.2% above English”
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According to a pie chart presented by a Valve representative, in 2024, 33.70% of Steam users selected Simplified Chinese as their language, while 33.50% chose English. This marks a small but significant lead of 0.20% in favor of Chinese, showcasing the current dominance of the Chinese language on Steam and how widespread the platform has become in the East. If we also consider Traditional Chinese, the gap increases by another 1%.
Other Languages on Steam
Following Chinese and English, the third most used language on Steam is Russian, with 8.20% of users selecting it. This is followed by Spanish (4.60%), Brazilian Portuguese (2.80%), German (2.50%), and Korean (2.20%).
Valve also shared other interesting insights, such as the fact that 50% of games leave early access after one year. Another feature that has been particularly successful is the invite-to-playtest function, which was popularized by Deadlock and will soon become an official feature, entering beta testing.
