> look at the most played games right now, look at the demographics for those games.
Doesn't Steam have a very long tail? Most played might not be very representative.
Maybe young men are just boring and all play mostly just a few games, while majority of players that are more diverse have their interests spread more evenly across others?
Cool story. Obviously wrong. You only need to go on steamdb and use two brain cells:
Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, PUBG and Apex Legends are almost 50% of the active players on any given day. They're PVP games, and their playerbase is >=90% male (it's obvious to anyone who has played them but you don't need to take my word for it, it's easy to verify). So the only way for what you say to be true would be for all other games on Steam to not by played by guys at all, which is not the case cause the "long tail" of Steam is Path of Exile, EA Sports, Forza Horzion, Cyberpunk, Destiny, etc.
Yes, there are other games that have a more balanced player base. There's Stardew Valley and others like that. Just go look at their player numbers, they're dwarfed by the most played. Steam player base skews massively to guys, anyone who things otherwise is wrong, and if the person that I was replying to doesn't see the same stats it's obvious that they're just in a bubble.
I don't think the data shows what you think it shows.
It looks more like 20% of all players, not over 50% if we look at first 10 games and about 25% when we look at top 20.
Various research on gamer demographics repeatedly shows that average gamer is pushing 40 and the gender split is pretty even. Steam can't be that far off.
Doesn't Steam have a very long tail? Most played might not be very representative.
Maybe young men are just boring and all play mostly just a few games, while majority of players that are more diverse have their interests spread more evenly across others?