Localizing Into These 12 Languages Lets YOU Access 95% of Steam’s Players...

Picking your languages for Localization can be a chore.

What markets do you want to target? How many players can you bring in?

Deciding these things towards your game’s release can seem like a time-consuming task, which is why we’d always recommend talking about localization early and discussing markets with a professional vendor.

But, there’s a quick hack that might help you out as you decide on your next localization…

95% of Steam’s Players can be accessed by localizing into only 11 languages (plus English, obviously). Some of them might surprise you….

1	English	35.69%
2	Simplified Chinese	27.72%
3	Russian	9.10%
4	Spanish - Spain	4.25%
5	Portuguese-Brazil	3.89%
6	German	2.90%
7	French	2.30%
8	Japanese	2.58%
9	Polish	1.65%
10	Korean	1.73%
11	Traditional Chinese	1.33%
12	Turkish	1.23%

The thing about Steam’s player base is that, despite having 29 “officially supported” languages, the vast majority of players play in a fairly select group of languages.

Past these into the remaining 17, you’ll notice that no singular language has more than 1% of Steam’s player base:

13	Thai	0.85%
14	Spanish - Latin America	0.65%
15	Ukrainian	0.68%
16	Italian	0.61%
17	Czech	0.55%
18	Hungarian	0.37%
19	Portuguese - Portugal	0.36%
20	Swedish	0.26%
21	Dutch	0.26%
22	Danish	0.23%
23	Vietnamese	0.17%
24	Finnish	0.15%
25	Romanian	0.13%
26	Norwegian	0.12%
27	Indonesian	0.12%
28	Greek	0.06%
29	Bulgarian	0.05%
30	Arabic	0.00%

With these relatively small player bases you may struggle more to recoup localization costs, at least at a top level. It’s always worth remembering that certain genres, art styles, and other design choices, may appeal to specific countries/player bases more than others, which is just as important as the number of players.

It’s always worth thinking on that deeper level when considering localization:

“Will this game resonate with players in that country?”

“Are there any aspects of my game that might offend/upset/alienate players in certain markets?”

“Does this genre perform well in specific markets?”

But, if you don’t have time or necessary data to make such specific choices, going with Steam’s top 12 languages is a safe bet to generate revenue, interest players, and make your game known.

These top 12 languages are fairly consistent across the last 5 years, making it clear that they’re a safe bet for localization, particularly on budget-conscious indie releases.

You could of course limit this to the top 10 and only lose around 2.5% of players, but that decision should be discussed and investigated, specifically regarding the questions mentioned earlier about market popularity.

Localization doesn’t need to be a difficult decision: Research where your game will do well, think about what players want, and make your game available in markets where it’ll succeed.

As of 2025, Steam has over 40 million concurrent users.

Localizing into these 12 Languages will let you access 38 million gamers.

It’s a no-brainer, don’t leave money on the table.