> In 2005 (the year Unity hit the market), there were thirty-nine new games on Steam. In 2021, there were over 10,000.
While I think your point still holds, I think it should be noted that 2005 was 2 years after steam released. And still primarily a distribution platform for valve’s first party games. There were many more games available via other distribution channels.
It's also worth noting that Steam has partially opened up for independent developers in 2012 with Steam Greenlight (via manual curation), and fully opened up only in 2017 with Steam Direct. Before that, you had to be an approved partner to be able to publish on Steam.
While I think your point still holds, I think it should be noted that 2005 was 2 years after steam released. And still primarily a distribution platform for valve’s first party games. There were many more games available via other distribution channels.