Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin says the core PC audience is "rather tiny," and that conventional ideas about gaming audiences and genres are fundamentally flawed.

In an article published on Medium, Galyonkin explores the buying habits of gaming sectors compared to the marketing done towards them.

He points out that big games are "cultural self-reinforcing phenomena," not products, and that it can be near-impossible for new titles to break into genres dominated by a handful of titles.

According to Galyonkin, players of MOBAs like Dota 2 and League of Legends, or MMORPGS like World of Warcraft, tend to only play those games, not purchasing many others and rarely jumping to another title in the same genre, despite competitors rushing in to snag their attention.

Similarly, Galyonkin asserts that demographics – for example age, gender, location – do not reliably predict the games people play, "at least not in any practical way."

"Core gamers," meanwhile – players who go through multiple titles a year – are relatively rare.

1% of Steam users own 33% of all copies of games sold on Steam, with 20% owning 88%, suggesting the vast majority of the platform's users only play a couple of games.

Galyonkin concludes by saying that the "core" audience for new PC games is made up of about 1.3 million people - "the 1% group."