The fishing game long tail: 13 games, 72 % of reviews
Contents
The Fishing-tagged Steam catalogue holds 596 entries and 958,179 reviews in total. They are distributed so unevenly that most games on the list barely exist for a buyer. Here is exactly how.
Half the catalogue has fewer than 83 reviews
The median is 83 reviews. The mean is 1,607.7 — and that is the headline number: the mean is 19 times the median, because a handful of large games drags it up.
- under 50 reviews — 247 games (41.4 %);
- under 100 reviews — 317 games (53.2 %);
- under 1,000 reviews — 506 games (84.9 %).
The catalogue by size
| Reviews per game | Games | Share of games | Reviews total | Share of reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 and up | 13 | 2.2 % | 688,585 | 71.9 % |
| 1,000-9,999 | 77 | 12.9 % | 185,912 | 19.4 % |
| 500-999 | 56 | 9.4 % | 39,902 | 4.2 % |
| 200-499 | 74 | 12.4 % | 24,375 | 2.5 % |
| 100-199 | 59 | 9.9 % | 8,863 | 0.9 % |
| 50-99 | 70 | 11.7 % | 4,831 | 0.5 % |
| 20-49 | 132 | 22.1 % | 4,104 | 0.4 % |
| 10-19 | 115 | 19.3 % | 1,607 | 0.2 % |
| Total | 596 | 100 % | 958,179 | 100 % |
Read the last two columns together. 13 games are 2.2 % of the list and 71.9 % of all reviews. The 247 games in the bottom two rows are 41.4 % of the list and 0.6 % of the reviews.
The top 13: where the first half ends
| # | Game | Reviews | Share | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stardew Valley | 393,330 | 41.05 % | 41.0 % |
| 2 | DAVE THE DIVER | 50,822 | 5.30 % | 46.4 % |
| 3 | WEBFISHING | 50,017 | 5.22 % | 51.6 % |
| 4 | DREDGE | 32,409 | 3.38 % | 55.0 % |
| 5 | Fishing Planet | 29,233 | 3.05 % | 58.0 % |
| 6 | HoloCure - Save the Fans! | 26,518 | 2.77 % | 60.8 % |
| 7 | Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition | 18,837 | 1.97 % | 62.7 % |
| 8 | Dinkum | 15,784 | 1.65 % | 64.4 % |
| 9 | How to Fish | 15,660 | 1.63 % | 66.0 % |
| 10 | Disney Dreamlight Valley | 15,657 | 1.63 % | 67.7 % |
| 11 | Coral Island | 14,125 | 1.47 % | 69.1 % |
| 12 | Sun Haven | 13,296 | 1.39 % | 70.5 % |
| 13 | Feed and Grow: Fish | 12,897 | 1.35 % | 71.9 % |
One game — Stardew Valley — is 41.05 % of every review in the catalogue. It takes all 587 remaining entries to make up the other half.
The third game already covers half the catalogue. The top 10 gives 67.7 %, the top 50 gives 85.6 %, the top 100 gives 92.2 %.
The bottom half of the catalogue — 298 games — holds 8,857 reviews between them, or 0.92 %. That is less than How to Fish has on its own.
How to Fish sits ninth
By the figure Steam prints in search, the game has 15,660 reviews — 9th of 596, and 1.63 % of the catalogue. It passed 587 entries in eleven days on sale.
Compare carefully, though. The 15,660 is English-language and Steam-purchase only, because that is how the storefront counts. On full API data as of 23:02 Kyiv time on 31 August 2026 the total is 44,256 — a different unit, which cannot be dropped into a table alongside other games’ storefront figures.
What we are not claiming
Reviews are not sales. We do not know how many people bought each game; Steam does not publish that. The share of buyers who write a review varies by game, so this table shows visibility, not money.
The bottom of the list is artificial. The catalogue minimum is 10 reviews, and that is no accident: Steam does not print a positive percentage at all below ten reviews. Games with 0-9 reviews never entered our sample, so the real tail of this market is longer than the one we measured.
596 entries are not 596 games. A tag catalogue also picks up add-ons — the top of this very list contains the DAVE THE DIVER - DREDGE Content Pack. We dropped nothing, so as not to shape the sample, but read the number as 596 store entries.
This is a single day’s snapshot. Every figure was read on 31 August 2026. How to Fish had then been on sale eleven days, and its row moves faster than the rest.
Frequently asked questions
How many reviews does a typical Steam fishing game have?
The catalogue median is 83 reviews. Half of the 596 entries have fewer, and 317 games have under a hundred.
Which fishing game has the most reviews?
Stardew Valley, with 393,330 reviews — 41.05 % of the entire Fishing-tagged catalogue.
Where does How to Fish rank by review count?
Ninth of 596 by Steam's storefront figure: 15,660 reviews, 1.63 % of the catalogue.
How concentrated is the fishing game market?
Heavily. 13 games of 596 (2.2 %) hold 71.9 % of all reviews, while the bottom 298 games hold 0.92 % between them.
Why are there no games with two or three reviews in the catalogue?
Steam does not display a positive percentage below ten reviews. So our sample's minimum is 10 — a property of the list, not of the market.