I think I’ve been meaning to get back to this and see what’s up there on the charts. I bet it’s mostly free-to-play online competitive stuff that’s been around for years minimum. For this list I sorted the 24 hour peak counts on SteamDB.
- Counter-Strike 2
Formerly known as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, they pulled an Overwatch 2 on it in order to move the game over to Source 2 and also managed to not royally fuck it up, unlike Overwatch 2.
- PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS
I think this is still popular because of China, but I think they’re more on the mobile version.
- Dota 2
This also still exists. I still can’t get into MOBAs.
- Apex Legends
Somehow, this still exists as well, despite EA’s efforts to the contrary.
- Delta Force
Yet another online shooter thing.
- NARAKA: BLADEPOINT
Yet another battle royale.
- Stardew Valley
The farming game that does farm stuff and might still be getting updates. The most I know about this is that there’s a monster who can be dated in an apparently platonic relationship.
- Wallpaper Engine
Because why not have a fancier wallpaper than usual.
- Rust
A survival type game that’s just kept going somehow. I’m not sure if they still have dongs out as an option.
- Marvel Rivals
The latest hero shooter type thingy unless 50 more of those came out since this one.
- Source SDK Base 2007
This either means Source mods or something less legal, I’m guessing.
- Banana
NFTs but not NFTs and still promises money to be made somehow.
- Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege X
The one thing Ubisoft might still have going for them because they keep blowing their money on NFTs and abuse.
- Grand Theft Auto V Legacy
The classic GTA Online client that also includes a campaign mode.
- Baldur's Gate 3
On this list so far, this is the first game that actually looks appealing, and I’d sure like to play it someday, but by the time I get to that I don’t think I’ll have anyone else to play with, so I’ll have to find other ways to weird people out with my choices of virtual sexual partners and also failing to wear pants consistently outside of those.
- Dead by Daylight
I feel like at this point they’ve crossed over with damn near every horror series and also Nicolas Cage.
- Bongo Cat
Some kind of idle typer thing that also spawns hats for a cat. I think.
- War Thunder
Don’t get into arguments in this game or else you’ll end up in the middle of a national security violation. That’s about all I know.
- RimWorld
Dwarf Fortress but in space. And on a planet. And in other places. And less dwarves, but also thankfully less elves.
- EA SPORTS FC 25
The latest un-American football card simulator featuring maybe an actual football soccer game in there somewhere.
- Spacewar
This is definitely people playing the first game ever made and not people playing a bunch of games they “found”.
- PEAK
I hate this game. I was once asked to play this flavor-of-the-month club offering with people and I spent most of my time not playing or not knowing where the hell to even go and I refunded it that same night. I think the developers of it are good people, but they have a Blizzard-like track record of making games I’m not interested in or just do not like, but slightly better because at the very least I found Another Crab’s Treasure to be funny due to how it’s possible to massively cheat with a giant gun that one-shots everything, though there’s less overpowered ways to make the game less annoying for anyone who despises how prevalent Souls games just are, such as myself.
- Football Manager 2024
Football soccer spreadsheet simulator. At least that’s what I think. There’s a mode somewhere to see actual sports, so I hear.
- Call of Duty®
Which one? I guess just all of them because they’ve mostly been the same game lately. But it’s probably Warzone. That game has resorted to absurd crossovers I wasn’t even aware of until someone just off-handedly mentions “oh yeah you can play Beavis and Butt-head in Calladooty” and I’m just like “sure, why not, might as well just add in Skibidi Toilet except I think that other game that’s beating the hell out of this one got there first”.
- Warframe
How close is the match between this and Kingdom Hearts for most confusing and convoluted plotline? I’ve played this before on the Switch and I might some day return to it on the PS5 or something because that’s where my free-to-play games live.
- Destiny 2
Somehow Bungie still hasn’t imploded after being infected by Activision’s greed, though I’m not sure we’ll ever see that Marathon reboot at this point.
- ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN
Because they just had to keep trying to make this game relevant even though I’m pretty sure a bunch of people are playing the original still anyway. Might as well take a genre I already don’t like and throw in others like battle royale and roguelike or whatever the hell else garbage this is, I don’t even care.
- DayZ
Somehow this is still around. Probably because of the battle royale stuff that was tacked on so people could just ignore the one or two zombies that still exist in the entire game.
- 7 Days to Die
Survival zombie game. That’s about all I know.
- Palworld
That game Nintendo hates so much they want to change the law itself to sue it out of existence and also allow a bunch of bootlegs of it on the Switch. I’d be more interested out of spite if it wasn’t yet another base building survival game at its core.
- Cyberpunk 2077
I think this game out-No-Man’s-Sky’d No Man’s Sky. I did eventually pick it up and played a fair bit before getting sidetracked by other games as usual. And yes, the game is fixed. But it still has funny bugs. It’s that kind of Skyrim quality but with better writing and environmental design and PAIN.
- Team Fortress 2
This one still manages to stick around even with all the waves of bots and the lack of developer response for months at a time to counter those bots. It’s the community. It’s been ages since I’ve played this though. Maybe if enough friends decide to join in.
- Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced
The fancier RTX and DirectStorage enabled GTA Online client with bonus campaign.
- VRChat
Despite my issues with this platform and how it’s been run here and there, I’m on here fairly often, at least weekly-ish outside of certain events that get more attention. I got lucky enough to meet a number of decent people to make sticking around for more than a month viable. Here’s to this platform not totally selling out to Facebook for the time being.
- Crosshair X
I’m not sure if this is technically “hax” or just a remedy for crosshairs not being entirely visible on a number of games, if at all visible.
- Don't Starve Together
A classic survival game that sounds like someone eating a violin while looking like Tim Burton sketched it out, now in co-op form. From many years ago.
- Hearts of Iron IV
It’s a “grand strategy” game, which means it takes place in the many kingdoms of China or whatever that one game is. Except not.
- Counter-Strike: Source
The Counter-Strike I played before, since it was the newest one and there were funny physics maps.
- ELDEN RING
See I told you people were still playing this. Maybe the other copy of this was just trying to capitalize on people who played with exactly two other people and no more or less.
- Red Dead Redemption 2
Do people still play Red Dead Online? Or are they just that into this hyper realistic cowboy simulator where the cops throw people out of town for as much as being naked riding a horse into people while firing wildly into the air. Actually I’m not sure you can actually do that in the game, so maybe it’s not as realistic as I thought.
- Grounded 2
The sequel to the GoAnimate-inspired Honey I Shrunk The Kids Yet Again And The State Should Take Them Away Because This Happens Too Often survival game. I played a demo of the previous game once and didn’t get into it so I’ll skip this one.
- Euro Truck Simulator 2
Trucks but Europe. I’ve only played the American version where the cops are much more aggressive and they’re about halfway across developing the country.
- Sid Meier's Civilization VI
There’s a sequel to this but it apparently sucked so much ass people only play this one. Or maybe they were so much into their existing games on this they just ignored the sequel by happenstance.
- tModLoader
Modded Terraria. There’s probably some funny mods out there, though compared to Starbound I’m not sure how many proportionally are sex type mods.
- Dune: Awakening
The latest licensed survival MMO thing. I remember there being a Conan one before.
- The Sims™ 4
Despite EA’s best efforts otherwise, people still play this one. I’ve played it before. I really only find it fun to play into the wackiness of Sims games, often times finding mods to make weird people who probably aren’t human in most cases instead of just weird-looking humans.
- HELLDIVERS™ 2
I remember this blowing up as a flavor-of-the-month club offering, and also Sony doing their best to kill it with mandatory logins but instead doing the unthinkable and making a rational decision to axe that idea. There’s still a dedicated group playing this as well, yet this is lower on the charts than Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Source. As far as my preference in alien horde slaughtering though, I’ll stick with Earth Defense Force.
- R.E.P.O.
Another flavor-of-the-month club offering I’ve played with people. I’m more okay with this one at least. The developers made an effort to counter a some of the issues with this style of game, like reducing the amount of downtime dead players get, as well as making losing an attempt at fun. They also figured out that their highly marketable little robot fellows are highly marketable and changed their Steam covers to reflect that instead of being a fucked up emoji that usually indicates asset flips.
- Black Myth: Wukong
All I know about this is people can stream it as long as they don’t talk about politics or feminism or something. Also that people thought it was a Souls game but they just forgot what an action game was.
- Terraria
Vanilla Terraria. I played this somewhat recently with some friends as a crash course on how the game works from start to final hard mode boss. It’s a neat little game for losing a whole dimension compared to Minecraft. Also it manages to have more to do.
- Farming Simulator 25
The latest in no-scope tractoring or whatever people do here. I wonder if people who do this would actually want to farm or do farm for real.
- WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers
One of the millions of Souls games to come out that just wants to make a name for itself and cash in on running fads but ends up being a complete mess.
- Umamusume: Pretty Derby
The game about anime horse girls based on real race horses. I thought this series was meant to be what happens when the race horses die and go to whatever dimension this is but apparently a lot are just based on retired horses, and retirement in this case doesn’t mean it in the Blade Runner sense. Given this is below a poor attempt at a Souls game on the charts, I think the initial streamer rush on this game has died down and now it’s the real enthusiasts who like to watch anime girls run in a loop before inexplicably holding an idol concert.
- Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond
This sounds like the most generic name, and it’s the most generic-looking virtual card game also, and apparently it’s complete garbage.
- Once Human
Yet another online survival thing I’ve already forgotten about.
- Path of Exile
Diablo but not being run into the ground by MicroActiBlizzard. Sounds like a winning combo for those into the genre. Not sure if the sequel will do anything better though.
- Geometry Dash
I think this is from when the 360 did general access indie games in a weirdly specific way that turned part of the store into the weird random stuff that can be found on Steam, and I think several other games from that ended up on Steam afterward.
- ARK: Survival Evolved
Yet another survival whatever but with dinosaurs and a company that can’t figure out what the hell to do with its playerbase other than just let people enjoy this one. I think every other attempt they’ve done after this has imploded.
- Left 4 Dead 2
Valve’s major offering during the zombie game fad around this game’s release. Still has a lot going on with it in terms of mods and custom campaigns and other things.
- Satisfactory
That former Epic exclusive factory game that I haven’t touched mainly because I don’t feel like playing factory games.
- Ready or Not
This apparently recently got a console release, and they felt the need to censor a lot of the game’s content to match console restrictions. They also apparently censored the quality of the game itself so it now looks completely broken. This game has been nothing but trouble since it came out, and all it really ends up as is a broken attempt to reboot the old SWAT series.
- NBA 2K25
The most HD sweat in the basketball series so far, until the next game comes out and is a tiny percentage more HD sweatier. Also lots more casino gambling instead of basketball.
- PAYDAY 2
I think there was a Payday 3, but it got so fucked up it was abandoned pretty much immediately and everyone went back to 2. Which was already fucked.
- Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
A medieval kinda game about strategy but sometimes actually being in the game instead of above it. That’s about all I know from the previous games.
- Total War: WARHAMMER III
Another RTS thing, I think. Unless it’s not RTS and is regular S. Maybe it’s both somehow.
- ARK: Survival Ascended
One of the attempts to keep making money from Ark players that imploded on itself.
- Limbus Company
This is some kind of RPG sequel to that SCP base management game thing, I think.
- Monster Hunter Wilds
The latest Monster Hunter game that apparently failed on PC spectacularly so much so that I bet Capcom will once again pull out of the PC market entirely. Apparently it came down to the game being way too easy for the hardcore fans and also being completely unoptimized. I don’t think they’ve fixed either of those issues and just keep adding random DLC, free or not.
- Garry's Mod
I wonder what gamemode is most popular on this currently. Is it still TTT? Prop Hunt? DarkRP? Some other thing I haven’t heard of?
- Project Zomboid
Zombie survival but the Sims. You can do anything, including microwaving shoes and dying from climbing through broken windows. There’s also mods to remove the zombies so all that’s left is just psychopaths who want to murder you on sight so you just have to be a psychopathic murderer back at them.
- Overwatch® 2
A major example on how not to do a sequel, mainly by killing its predecessor and then totally fucking up the sequel in general. I’m not sure how playable this is at this point.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
Skyrim and its mods will just keep enduring, probably even long after Elder Scrolls 6 comes out in a couple decades maybe.
- Titan Quest II
Another Diablo that isn’t Diablo. All the Diablo-looking games always have to have these big balls on screen.
- Valheim
Viking survival that’s kind of low-poly. I keep calling this one Wall Ham. But that sounds more like a Castlevania game.
- Street Fighter™ 6
Street Fighter becomes a weird online thing about fighting everybody on the street with custom characters that can be mutilated in wonderful ways within the editor.
- BeamNG.drive
The classic car wreck simulator. Yet I somehow still haven’t played it, as much as I like to wreck stuff in games. Though I have played things in Teardown.
- Crusader Kings III
A Paradox strategy game with infinity billion DLC attached.
- SCUM
Yet another online survival thing that I wouldn’t be able to tell from the others.
- Rocket League
I guess this is just still around because some people still play this thing through Steam and don’t want to install the ass-backwards Epic launcher that probably needs to be installed to run this anyway.
- The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
Because these indie roguelikes just never die even as much as they die.
- OBS Studio
The streaming software that beat out XSplit by not costing a bunch of money and I think most people have moved on from that to this because it actually works. Except some of the Vinesauce streamers for whatever reason, which means about 5-10 minutes of attempting to capture a window for whatever the latest meme game is.
- Hunt: Showdown 1896
I forgot this game existed. It’s apparently an “extraction shooter” which means “been there done that”.
- Soundpad
A soundboard to micspam people in whatever thing.
- Factorio
A big factory making game about shooting bugs and building a rocket I think. I just can’t get into these factory games.
- Abiotic Factor
Half-Life but a multiplayer survival thing. Interesting take on it at least.
- Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
Because sequels keep ruining everything, just remaster the one that actually works in HD, makes sense.
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
French Persona with parrying. I don’t feel like playing Persona or needing frame-perfect timing to survive any match, as much as some people insist that’s not required to beat the game, just grind to level a billion with infinity health on Game Journalist difficulty. Apparently this game’s success implies the desire for “AA” games, which isn’t games that drive people to drink, but is closer to how the PS2 library worked.
- Black Desert
That MMO with a character creator I still haven’t bothered with.
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The game that came before Cyberpunk 2077 and also made expectations for that game really high. I’ve played a little of it but haven’t quite gotten into it, though I see the appeal.
- FINAL FANTASY XIV Online
That game that has a free trial to whatever extent. Apparently they risked bringing down all of Square Enix by fucking up the latest dungeon or something because I think this game accounts for the majority of that company’s income.
- It Takes Two
One of the many Hazelight games that needs another person to play, which means I’m probably not playing it anytime soon, even though I’d like to someday.
- Phasmophobia
Ghost hunting with friends. Apparently it’s a lot grindier now for whatever reason, probably got infected with mobile game design.
- Europa Universalis IV
Another Paradox strategy game with infinity billion DLC.
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
The hyper realistic medieval simulator. The first game turned me off of wanting to play any game in this series, but apparently this one’s much better, mainly because the player character can actually do something other than be a weakling outside of grinding for an hour, a.k.a. the Lester the Unlikely thing but that didn’t get a sequel. And also got an upgrade in sarcasm.
- Fallout 4
I wonder if this is mostly people playing Fallout London. I have been meaning to get to that one but was seeing if the mod would be just a bit more stable first.
- THE FINALS
Another free to play shooter I’m not interested in.
- Squad
ARMA but not I guess.
- Sid Meier's Civilization V
I think this is people who are still stuck in their existing games and missed two sequels now.
- Lost Ark
Another Diablo thing maybe. Unrelated to any attempt to make a sequel to the Ark game with dinosaurs.
- REMATCH
Football soccer from the people who made the Epic exclusive martial arts game that makes you old. Regular football soccer. No cars, no cards, no spreadsheets.
I guess that’s Steam games for now. Go figure I’m not interested in most of them but that’s not much different than usual. Just so many online competitive type things I don’t want to go anywhere near. Or just garbage sometimes. I’m just very burned out on “what’s popular” with games so that’s probably also why I didn’t bother with one of these for years. I was just reminded as I was going over old posts. Most of the games on here I’m fine with or better are pretty much older ones. Also so many of these are just older ones that have stuck around that long. Usually multiplayer.
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