The Popular Games on Steam, Once Again

I’ve been meaning to take another look on what most people seem to be playing on Steam lately, and see if I can make anything of it.

1. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
   Some things never really change, do they? Though this has gone free-to-play, I still haven’t really gotten into this, due to my lack of interest in multiplayer.
2. Dota 2
   And this is still somehow relevant. MOBAs somehow haven’t gotten eclipsed entirely by meme royales or whatever.
3. Fall Guys
   Speaking of royales, at least this one’s different. I might actually be interested in playing this, if I wasn’t so biased against multiplayer games in general, including paid ones with microtransactions.
4. PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
   And I still have absolutely no interest in playing this.
5. Crusader Kings III
   Something new here, this Crusader Kings thing is one of those super strategy games about kingdoms and doing weird stuff to make the kingdom work. I haven’t really played anything like this.
6. Source SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer
   This probably means some mod is very popular. As to what mod, I have no idea. Maybe it’s some form of DarkRP that doesn’t involve needing Garry’s Mod, I don’t know.
7. Among Us
   This has become really popular on Twitch and is pretty much a game about finding the traitor, who is going around murdering everyone or something. Essentially 2D Trouble in Terrorist Town.
8. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
   Some kinda Counter-Strike-esque team squad shoot thing. Not my thing. I also don’t like having to use a dozen launchers to play a game, Ubisoft.
9. Football Manager 2020
   Hooray for sports spreadsheet simulator current year.
10. Grand Theft Auto V
    This game is being pushed as eternal, thanks to Rockstar’s unending pushing of it on everything.
11. Team Fortress 2
    This is still somewhat popular, even though apparently most of the population is just bots and bots that attack bots.
12. Warframe
    I’ve played this on Switch a while back and haven’t really touched it since. A neat game, but I just seem to be unable to stick to MMOs and MMO-type stuff.
13. Rust
    This old survival game. It’s… a survival game. Like others, and with others like it.
14. Rocket League
    This game that I played some time before but have since grown to utterly loathe it and everything that’s gone wrong with it. It’s a big sellout mess and not worth anything to me, and it’s going free-to-play on another store that I’m not going to bother with.
15. Destiny 2
    I don’t think I can get into this one either. If I can’t really get into Warframe, which is like a better kind of one of these, then no way I’m touching this. Activision’s greed still permeates through the experience even though Bungie has since taken over.
16. ARK: Survival Evolved
    Another survival game, but with dinosaurs.
17. Dead by Daylight
    Some kind of multiplayer game where a bunch of people try to not die from some monster or something. It seems to have a lot of borrowed properties as DLC.
18. Sid Meier's Civilization VI
    It’s that game about hexagons that people play for way too long and then Ghandi nukes everyone. Part 6.
19. Garry's Mod
    Classic Source engine weirdness. There may or may not be one in the works for Source 2.
20. 7 Days to Die
    This game is apparently some kind of zombie sandbox survival tower defense RPG and has been in early access for years. Somehow this is typical.
21. PAYDAY 2
    A game about robbing stuff that has a ton of DLC and I’m not sure if it’ll still be around for long.
22. The Elder Scrolls Online
    An interesting concept but I’m not into MMOs and I’d much rather screw around in the fantasy zone on my own, with excessive mods as desired.
23. Marvel's Avengers
    This is a game I’m very uninterested in and more just want to see it be a constant trainwreck that never improves, but the problem is that if it sells a lot of copies, which it seems to be doing, it just further nullifies any potential of the industry and the whole scene of video games becomes an uninteresting grey. That’s already happened with my interest in new consoles.
24. Terraria
    It updated recently, again. It’s still somehow somewhat relevant and may or may not have torch-based luck.
25. FINAL FANTASY XIV Online
    An MMO that sucked but then became good once they totally redid it, and yet I still haven’t wanted to play because, well, it’s an MMO.
26. Monster Hunter: World
    I haven’t really been able to get into any Monster Hunter games, but this one has some pretty neat monster designs. I wish I could just ride the monsters and cause trouble that way instead of going around hunting them down.
27. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
    I don’t know if I can get into Witcher games, but this is said to be a really good one, and the group behind it has good motives.
28. Factorio
    A neat game, it’s a lot of busy stuff going on and it’s more the kind of thing someone would play if they really like complex machines. And that seems to be a big genre.
29. War Thunder
    Some kind of free-to-play plane fighting game. Not my thing.
30. Euro Truck Simulator 2
    Truck simulators are neat, and this one keeps sticking around. While the USA equivalent gets the occasional state, this one gets countries. Of course the countries have typically been smaller than states, since this started on the west half of the country.
31. Farming Simulator 19
    I don’t entirely get but also somewhat get farming simulators. I just wonder who would be willing to actually set up a farm.
32. Sid Meier's Civilization V
    Somehow the old version of the new game is still on this list.
33. Wallpaper Engine
    If you really want a fancy animated 3D wallpaper, I guess this is the program for it. However, I like performance and hardly ever have my wallpaper fully visible.
34. DayZ
    This is somehow still going. These zombie survival games that end up having next to no zombies and are mostly snipers and somehow this just became the royale meme.
35. Hearts of Iron IV
    It’s a super strategy game. And it just looks like a board game as those do. So it’s pretty much virtual Risk, maybe.
36. Total War: WARHAMMER II
    Somehow this is both turn-based and real-time strategy. Sounds complicated.
37. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
    Skyrim, somehow keeping itself relevant by whatever means necessary. This is the newer engine build that has fancier graphics. I’ve recently installed this to mod the hell out of it.
38. Brawlhalla
    I guess this is Ubisoft wanting to do Smash Bros. and I keep forgetting this game exists. It also has a million crossovers. Just saying that Smash Bros. isn’t all about how many crossovers you can do.
39. Black Desert Online
    The MMO with the extensive character creator that I have no idea what it’s like past said character creator because it just looks like an MMO to me and I can’t seem to get into those.
40. Risk of Rain 2
    A 3D game where I think robots played in co-op fight monsters and it might be some kinda roguelike.
41. SMITE
    A free-to-play MOBA. Never mind.
42. Arma 3
    A hyper-realistic military shooter where you can also just screw around in the sandbox, so it at least has that going for it.
43. RimWorld
    I hear it’s like Dwarf Fortress but space and graphics, and somehow you can make a duck smoke weed apparently, among other things. Something like that does sound in line with Dwarf Fortress.
44. World of Tanks Blitz
    A tank shoot game that’s free to play and so on and whatever.
45. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
    An RTS classic where people go wololo and stuff happens.
46. Fallout 4
    A game that I did have fun with while I played and then haven’t touched since. Mainly I’m waiting for some major total conversion mods to come out. Not sure why this is up so high, maybe people just really don’t want to play 76 so hard that they went back to this. Maybe there’s a big mod out anyway. If it’s that Frost thing, no thanks. Or maybe they’re just using it for weird porn.
47. Europa Universalis IV
    One of those super strategy games again. This time… I guess Europe. Again.
48. Stardew Valley
    Essentially the good Harvest Moon ever since they stopped making those and started remaking them under different names and genres or whatever. If I was more into farming within strict time limits, I’d consider it.
49. Unturned
    I’ve looked at this once. It’s a lot like one of those DayZ things but simple graphics.
50. NBA 2K20
    This is that gambling simulator with secret basketball minigame.
51. Wasteland 3
    I hear this is broken as hell but has potential once it stops being broken as hell.
52. Cities: Skylines
    Still going, keep making cities and such. I have a passing interest in this, mainly it became more interesting once it “borrowed” more stuff from previous SimCity games.
53. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
    The most recent and early access of course game that involves medieval super battles. I’m not sure what else. But it mostly seems to be the big battles.
54. Counter-Strike
    The classic, still going. I’m told this may be mostly from Russia, but anyone who can appreciate a classic FPS without all the bizarre DLC stuff may just have good taste wherever they are.
55. Microsoft Flight Simulator
    The new game. It seems to run as well as any other flight simulator. It also takes a lot to download, but still somehow less than that one Call of Duty thing. Comparatively, this covers the whole planet while Call of Duty covers… some places. Also, being a flight simulator, I guess we’ll see really expensive DLC from third parties. That’s just something about the modding community for flight simulators, it seems they want you to buy the planes like real planes but at a thousandth of the price, maybe.
56. Divinity: Original Sin 2
    A game that’s like Dungeons and Dragons so I hear. You can also be a skeleton or a lizard among other things, so I’m interested in playing this someday.
57. NBA 2K21
    It’s a new basketball game, allegedly. These have horrible track records now and this is no different. As far as 2K sports games that aren’t completely composed of raw sewage, there’s apparently some golf game that game out recently but isn’t on this list. Yet this one is. And its predecessor. I’m not sure if sports fans just enjoy trash or just feel obligated. Granted I feel that golf is probably far less popular than basketball, but still, if the more popular sport is getting the worse games, and the better games are some comparatively niche crowd, that’s just more reason to remain a niche player.
58. Paladins
    So this is like Overwatch I guess, except from hopefully not a terrible company.
59. Path of Exile
    Like Diablo but free somehow, and also from a hopefully not terrible company.
60. Spacewar
    Of course, Spacewar, among the earliest ever games, and is on here to represent… other things.
61. eFootball PES 2020
    Konami’s eternally phoned-in football soccer thing. Still seems to top whatever 2K is doing, though.
62. Stellaris
    Super strategy, but in space this time. Yay.
63. Red Dead Redemption 2
    A really long drawn out game focused on supposed hyper-realism, like the rule police getting mad if you ride your horse in town or ever so slightly run someone over. And of course being a modern Rockstar game, they love to push the online.
64. Left 4 Dead 2
    Still going, somehow, with community-driven updates. Depending on the community is a very Valve thing to do, as they adopt whatever as an official thing.
65. F1 2020
    Formula 1 racing. That’s this game. I prefer my racing games to be at least a little different with the cars, and possibly have all kinds of weird tricks.
66. Football Manager 2019
    Football soccer spreadsheet simulator of last year. Yay.
67. STAR WARS™: The Old Republic™
    An MMO that EA brought over to Steam. Apparently it’s fairly decent, but being an EA MMO thing, insists you buy subscriptions.
68. VRChat
    Something I’d be checking out more if I had a VR setup on my PC. It’s that whole virtual socialization thing that many previous virtual worlds have had a go at doing, this time with optional but recommended VR support. I’ve really only looked at random things in it outside of VR, mainly seeing what weird avatars people come up with. I’d probably do more actual stuff when I’d get a VR thing.
69. Horizon Zero Dawn
    A horribly broken PS4 port. While another game running on the same engine, Death Stranding, got very high marks in its PC version, this one just completely broke somehow. Maybe it’s that Kojima magic that made Death Stranding work so well. Maybe the developers just dropped all their cares halfway or this got rushed out, which I’d highly suspect the latter. I’d think maybe the developers between these games would want to share some hot tips on making the game actually work, since it is possible.
70. Phantasy Star Online 2
    After having a really broken launch in the West through the Windows store, it came to at least a functional launcher here. I’d love to check this out, even with my bad record of playing MMOs for very long, but it turns out I’m low on disk space from all the other Steam and related stuff I have installed.
71. Albion Online
    An MMO that… takes place in Albion… I guess…?
72. Crusader Kings II
    That super strategy game that got a sequel recently, but this one has a secret animal kingdom mode somehow.
73. Craftopia
    This one’s apparently pretty recent in early access. As in two days ago. I thought it was around longer because it seems like a name I’ve heard before. It’s another survival game that combines a bunch of stuff into one, and, as previously mentioned, is in early access.
74. Don't Starve Together
    That game that looks like Tim Burton’s sketchbook, and that one guy is probably Johnny Depp somehow, but now it’s co-op. Some kinda survival game.
75. tModLoader
    Terraria, but with mods. That’s all that really needs to be said here.
76. Satisfactory
    A game from people who eventually remembered Steam exists and released it here after some time on some other store, while they keep putting other games on that other store, so maybe they only felt obligated because enough people asked. It’s a game about making factories. Also it has an “arachnophobia” mode where spider monsters turn into disturbing holographic 2D cat pictures. I don’t think the arachnophobia switch should make your game more scary if it’s intended to make it less scary.
77. Conan Exiles
    A survival kinda game. Again. It takes place in Conan world. So do Conan stuff. I guess. Like be barbaric maybe.
78. Sea of Thieves
    The pirate game from MicroRare that had a very rough launch and I was sure it was going to drop out after six months, but they’re keeping at it and people find it fun. So that’s nice.
79. DARK SOULS™ III
    This game is the Dark Souls 3 of Dark Souls. I can never really find myself getting into this kinda thing.
80. Hunt: Showdown
    It’s an FPS multiplayer game where I guess you fight each other and enemies. Sure, then, I keep forgetting this one exists.
81. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
    The classic version of Skyrim, which has a lot more mods because it was around longer.
82. Tabletop Simulator
    A neat way to play tabletop games if you don’t have people in your house. The problem is I’d still need people to play tabletop games with online who also have this if I was going to get it.
83. Space Engineers
    A game I played before, it’s about building spaceships or whatever and you do stuff. It’s a sandbox thing.
84. Total War: THREE KINGDOMS
    Don’t confuse with Fire Emblem: THREE HOUSES. Another some kinda strategy game.
85. Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links
    Of course some Yu-Gi-Oh game gets on here for whoever’s a fan of the game and if they were able to localize it cheaply enough.
86. Elite Dangerous
    A complicated space game that also has a lot of expensive DLC passes and currency for some reason. Maybe it’s trying to be like EVE Online.
87. Age of Empires II (2013)
    The previous remaster of this game. I’m not sure what the difference is aside from even more graphics. Maybe.
88. Borderlands 3
    This game had a relatively short period of being exclusive to some other store before showing up on Steam, and it was apparently very mediocre. I haven’t really gotten into these games anyway, because they seem to really insist that you play co-op, and I don’t know if I can get someone to stick with the co-op through the entire game for that.
89. Soundpad
    So this is some kind of soundboard that hooks into the microphone for voice chats. Pretty much micspam made easy for 5 bucks apprently.
90. Dota Underlords
    It’s that automatic chess thing from when Valve decides to be a follower rather than a leader.
91. Total War: ROME II – Emperor Edition
    What if it was super strategy, but this time it was in Rome? 2? And you’re the emperor I guess?
92. Halo: The Master Chief Collection
    They’ve been gradually adding to this one while making sure it’s not completely broken with each game added. Most recently, Halo 3. I would like to actually give the Halo series a fair shot, now that I can actually be capable of aiming properly with the mouse with these games.
93. World of Warships
    Like everything else, there’s a free-to-play game about all the other war vehicles, so here’s battleships.
94. No Man's Sky
    A neat game, started out terribly but eventually became decent. I’ve really only played this in PSVR, and I think the VR aspect adds more to it, even if it’s somewhat limited in PSVR in terms of visuals, so I’m not sure how much I’d play outside of VR for the sake of immersion.
95. Planet Zoo
    A game that’s not about rollercoasters, but about zoos. Somehow its rollercoaster predecessor is nowhere to be seen on this list.
96. Company of Heroes 2
    A World War 2 RTS. That’s what this game is.
97. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
    This game again, still somehow relevant. People still seem to like their Zelda-like roguelikes.
98. Conqueror's Blade
    Apparently this one’s an MMO. Okay then.
99. Control
    This is pretty low on the list for a recent release. Sure, it’s a singleplayer game and people really seem to want to get back to grinding out their multiplayer stuff. But also this was held exclusive on another store for a whole year, so maybe this is just less relevant now and therefore less popular. Also, on consoles, the publisher decided that people who want to play this with raytracing on the fancy new consoles have to buy the game again. Generally, I can’t agree with whatever this publisher is doing with this game. Yet somehow Death Stranding got on PC on more than one store just fine.
100. STAR WARS™ Battlefront™ II
     This is the new version of the game. Once a horrible mess of microtransactions and lootboxes to the point where every world government got involved with the mechanics in every game to some varying degree, it seems to have been fixed up. Plus it has a campaign.

So that’s about it, then. Mostly stuff I haven’t played, as usual. No idea what to feel about games these days. I’m just very picky I guess. I follow very specific niche stuff and tend to avoid multiplayer-focused games.

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