The Steam Workshop's Invisible Second Tier (2026): 366,465 Microtransaction Items That Hold Only 0.45% of All Subscriptions

Every Steam Workshop listing carries a hidden piece of metadata that splits the entire platform into two economies: Steam's file_type field. It's easy to miss because both values look like ordinary Workshop items, but they are categorically different things.

Using ModSignal's live dataset of 7.26 million active Workshop items across 396 games, we measured the divide. The result is a stark two-tier platform — and a story about which game cracked the second tier and which ones never did.

The two file types

Steam defines two relevant values for file_type in its published-file API:

• 0 — Community (aka k_EWorkshopFileTypeCommunity): "a normal Workshop item that can be subscribed to." This is the mod economy everyone thinks of — map packs, overhauls, weapon skins for community use.
• 1 — Microtransaction (aka k_EWorkshopFileTypeMicrotransaction): "a Workshop item that is meant to be voted on for the purpose of selling in-game" — the curated tier built for in-game item economies (think Rust store skins, CS2 cosmetics, Dota 2 cosmetics).

The first is a publishing floor open to everyone. The second is a curated storefront lane — items are submitted, voted on, and (in theory) sold.

Here's how those two tiers stack up across ModSignal's live catalog:

So while the community tier is a 12.5 billion-subscription engine, the entire microtransaction tier — all 366,465 items across every game that uses it — accounts for 56.7 million subscriptions. That's 0.45% of everything installed on the Workshop. As a catalog, the curated lane is substantial (5% of all items). As an install base, it's a rounding error.

Rust owns the entire second tier

Almost none of that 56.7M is spread around. A single game concentrates it.

Rust's 157,882 microtransaction items hold 56,679,682 of the tier's 56,679,689 subscriptions — 99.99999% of it. Every other game on the list ships a comparable or larger curated catalogue and gets single-digit subscriptions or zero. Dota 2 publishes 44,824 curated items and collectively earns 1 subscription. Counter-Strike 2 — the biggest community-mod economy on Steam — publishes 113,950 microtransaction items and gets 0.

That's the headline, and it's worth sitting with: a catalog of nearly 366,000 curated-to-be-sold items across a dozen games holds fewer subscriptions than a single popular Garry's Mod addon. The entire second tier of the Steam Workshop is, to within a rounding error, a Rust skin store wearing a Steam Workshop costume.

Why Rust, and only Rust

The obvious question is what Rust did differently. The answer lies in how the two ecosystems use the Workshop.

Rust's microtransaction tier is its community store. Items like "Tempered | Thompson" (82,512 subscriptions), the "Whiteout" clothing set (Hoodie 75,676, Pants 74,404, Chestplate 72,504, Facemask 71,971, Boots 63,730, Kilt 59,396 — each six figures), and "Ghost Furnace (Transparency) (Glow)" (72,170) aren't aspirational submissions nobody asked for. They are the game's actual cosmetics pipeline, voted through the curated lane because that's where Rust's skins live before they rotate into the store.

The tell is the top of the pile:

Twenty-six Rust microtransaction items individually clear 50,000 subscriptions — more than every other game's entire microtransaction tier combined. Rust built a real loop: community members design skins, the curated lane votes them in, the most-liked rotate to the in-game store for actual sale, and players both install and buy them — which pushes the Workshop numbers up and the store's rotation signal down the funnel. The Workshop subscription count for a Rust skin is a proxy for market demand, not just a download counter.

The other games never closed that loop. CS2, Dota 2 and TF2 each have enormous curated catalogues (31%, 12% and 10% of all microtransaction items respectively), but their curated items don't route through the Workshop as installables — their cosmetics live in the Steam market and in the games' own stores, not as subscribable Workshop items. The Workshop lane for them is a display case, not a shop. So the items exist, get created by the thousands, and accumulate essentially zero subscriptions because nobody is expected to install them.

What this means for creators and studios

For a mod or skin creator, the lesson is about which lane you're actually in:

• The community tier is where demand lives. 93.6% of items and 99.5% of subscriptions. If you want installs, you publish here — the floor is open and the audience is real.
• The microtransaction tier is only worth building for if the game has a working store rotation. Rust is the proof: when the curated lane feeds a real in-game market, the same Workshop items carry six-figure installs. When it doesn't (CS2, Dota 2, TF2), you're building for a display case — thousands of items, zero subscriptions.

To be direct about the limitation: Rust's install numbers here are Workshop-subscription counts, not sales. A Rust skin with 82,512 Workshop subscriptions isn't 82,512 purchases — it's 82,512 players who installed/subscribed to it in the Workshop, which itself is a strong signal of genuine demand in an ecosystem where the item also gets bought in-game. The other games' near-zero numbers are the honest contrast: they prove the microtransaction tier of the Workshop is, for most of the platform, decorative.

The Steam Workshop is not one market. It's two. One is the largest fan-content distribution network in games, and the other is a single successful store — Rust's.