New games performed really well on Steam last year, shaking the dominance of the same old live service games

Was it just a freak year?

New games performed really well on Steam last year - notably better than the year before.

Data analysed by GamesDiscoverCo shows that there were more new games (classified as being released this year or the previous year) in Steam's Top 100 highest-grossing games chart than last year - 31 to 24, respectively - and that games released in 2025 made collectively significantly more money than games released in other years.

Steam categorises games into Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze tier in terms of the money made. The Platinum tier does feature Steam's perennial juggernauts Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2, PUBG and Apex Legends, but the eight other Platinum games are all newly released this year.

They are: Monster Hunter Wilds, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Arc Raiders, Marvel Rivals, Battlefield 6, and, surprisingly, drug-pushing game Schedule 1, and co-op horror game REPO. Call of Duty is considered new there courtesy of technical change to using a Call of Duty app.

In the Gold tier, there's Borderlands 4, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Split Fiction, Elden Ring Nightrein, The Elder Scrolls Oblivion remaster, and EA Sports FC 26. In the Silver tier there's Dune: Awakening, Silksong, Civ 7, Inzoi, Delta Force, Dispatch, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Stellar Blade, Peak and Where Winds Meet.

It's an encouraging result in a market that seems to be dominated by perennial juggernauts. Just yesterday we saw PlayStation data highlight that the most played games in 2025 were exactly the same as in 2024 - Fortnite, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto 5, Roblox, and Minecraft. And yes, 'most played' isn't the same as 'highest grossing', but the data paints a picture of apparent stagnation all the same - a market dominated by the endless tails of massive live service games.

In reference to the Steam data, GameDiscoverCo's Simon Carless said: "It's more front-loaded for recency than we expected. Why would this be? It's possible that 2025 was just a super-strong year for new games." It's also possible that perennial sellers had heavy discounts so weren't able to take as much money as full-priced games. "It's probably.. a combo of these things?" he reasoned.

Other tidbits from GameDiscoverCo's analysis show Warframe and Dead by Daylight - both games that are more than 10 years old now - staying strong as Gold-tier revenue-makers for the past four years. Elsewhere, Baldur's Gate 3 continues to show remarkable staying power as a Gold-tier game (the previous two years it was Platinum), as does Cyberpunk 2077, which is still Gold-tier five years after release. CD Projekt Red announced recently that Cyberpunk 2077 had sold 35 million copies.

Which new games will feature this time next year, I wonder...