Steam's biggest genres have changed a ton since 2021

Hello and welcome to the Game Discover Co. Show. Your place to learn all about game discovery, the games industry, and so much more related to video games. I am your co-host, Chris Plant, and I am joined as always by my co-host, Simon Carlos. How you doing today, Simon?
I'm doing great. Yeah, it's uh it's it's a it's a busy time. I said it last week it was a busy time, but I'm just going to repeat myself every week because it's always a busy time in the in the PC console game biz. So, I'm looking forward to talking about it more. We have so much to talk about. We have four stories plus the usual like what happened last week, what's happening this week, and my question of the week. But the four stories that we have are meaty, meaty, meaty stories, including 30 years of Valve, which is where I think we should start because it is a big thing to talk about. We are uh living through the 30th anniversary of Valve right now, this week. Um, I think it just passed technically and I want to

use this as a chance to kind of reflect on what Valve has become over those 30 years and kind of where it's going. And I think in terms of the stuff that we care about and what we talk about on the show, Steam is number one. So, let's go back to the beginning of that. What was the initial reaction like to Steam? Yeah, I mean Steam I I do recall early years of Steam and I think people were kind of like, oh V F valve's doing this thing for their own games, you know, and if and it is worth noting, you know, I think Valve founded 1996 um in in 200 September 2003 was Steam released out of beta. So the first seven years of Valve, they were really just just making games and they only started also putting third party actually quite quite early in 2005 they had a a smattering of third party games on Steam like Ragdollar Kung Fu and Darwinia. Um but yeah it I think early on people were

just like oh well you know Valve needs this thing to get patches and online working for their some of their games that are quite online. That's great. And I don't think anyone was really suspecting where that was going to go exactly. I I want to jump forward in time quite a bit because there's so much history and we can talk about you know how Halflife factors into this how source and we'll kind of step on that in a second but let's get more recent like the last 10 15 years when Steam is a platform that is hosting not just Valve's games but like a ton of games that's bringing in indie games and there's a bunch of competition like Ubisoft is trying to compete Activision is trying to compete Blizzard when it's not Activision is trying to compete EA. Why do you think Steam has la like not just lasted I would say but like been dominant like those power players were not able to knock it off its perch or even really nudge it. [snorts]
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think a lot of it is Valve had quite a holistic view I

think of uh the industry and what they wanted to do which is they just really wanted to help um you know I think help devs get get their game out there and they were a little bit less concerned commercially. So, I think I think it helps that they have been relatively holistic and rel I mean, obviously, we know they make a great deal of money from Steam, but I I don't think that's honestly been their main goal, especially especially early on. I think they were just like, well, we have this platform. It's great to open it up to more people. So, I think that's I think that's really helped. And it also helped I think that they were opening up to smaller companies. I think when you get big companies and they want to partner with big companies, then it gets complicated. And I think they were there obviously early enough. But also I do think first adopter is obviously very important. You know Amazon is as big as it is because it was one of the first first adopters. And so I think it's a combination of first adopter and being relatively independent in their thinking.
Yeah. I mean you talk about that idea of focusing on the experience over the

money. And and to be clear I I don't think Steam or Valve is altruistic. They still want to make cash but there is a difference between that and the infinite growth. What we've seen from places like Epic is, okay, we have Unreal and then we have Fortnite and also we want to have the Epic Game Store. We want to own like every step of it. And Valve in theory could have been positioned for something like this already having Steam being a success, having the Source Engine. Why did the Source Engine not get ballooned in the way that Unity or or Unreal have over the years? That's actually a really good question and something I haven't thought about a lot. I think the main reason is as as you might know, I think right now with Source 2, I think um uh Sandbox uh is maybe the only third party game using Source 2 right now. Uh and which is kind of crazy from the from the Garry's Mod folks. And so I think basically what happened and what from what they've said, you know, the engine is under

development fairly actively. So I just think that Steam H really was not that interested in making a commercial product out of source or although they have obviously allowed third parties to use it. But I don't think they've been interested in setting up the kind of infrastructure that you need to uh efficiently support both internal and external development. And that was even a problem for for a long time for um you know not for Unity so much although I know that they did start out making games in Unity engine but certainly for Unreal. it it used to be you could really only make first-person shooters in Unreal early on because it was really the only thing it was it was set up to do. So, I just think that's a whole other thing that Valve just what hasn't been that interested in. Even though you're right, they could have made I think pretty good money that way. I think they were just more interested in making their own games with their engine and obviously um obviously Steam because I think Steam um is probably a little easier to scale. I think it's difficult when you're making an a game in an engine and you're modifying the engine

and external stuff. Whereas I think if you're if you have an online platform for distributing stuff, I think your game fits in the same size hole as all the other games. So I think that's why it's probably easier to scale that way.
Yeah. I don't know if this is apocryphal or not, but I I've heard this idea that Valve doesn't want to grow beyond its headquarters, that it, you know, wants to fit inside literally inside of a building and that part of why you don't see things like the Steam Deck become the Xbox in scope is that that they actually have kind of limits of some sort, whether that is literally physical space or not. it. Have you heard much about that? Like how much of this is just kind of the rumors that get spread around at GDC to explain with company's behavior and how much of this is a real strategy of focus?
Well, I I think they have expanded using other companies. I think you've seen them incre increasingly in recent years use third party contractors to do stuff like Steam support. that is not really

discussed very much. But I think um you know I did see recently uh someone was dumping some data out of the internals of steam somewhere and there was a list of contractors. I think it was the list of contractors who have access to their systems and I recognized a number of companies in there like VMC and and and others. So um you know so I think the point is they do work at scale but generally with external contracting companies and I think one reason they don't have multiple offices for example is uh their unique structure makes it almost impossible to do so because if you really are in a situation where you can decide which department to work in and wheel your desk to another department because because you want to go work over there if you have more than one office what are you going to do like wheel your desk onto a bus and go over to the other office. So I I I think I think there is some logic in in the idea that there will uh probably only ever be one one office of teams. You've also seen this like they've resisted even setting up Asian offices for stuff like Steam Deck distribution. You know, they've again picked picked external

partners for that. So I yeah, I think that's I think that's true. I've never heard anyone say that explicitly, but knowing what I know about company structure, I believe that's probably true. Yeah, we're going to talk a little bit shortly about the competition or like what there is of the competition, but where do you see all of this going over like let's say the next five or I mean 10 it would be hard to project years moving forward because I hear about you know Steam being able to run on Android potentially. Well, right now it can unofficially, but maybe will officially quite soon. Um, I hear about Xbox and PlayStation making basically PCs that are going to be in your living room in the future. Is there a big opportunity for growth ahead for Steam or am I kind of projecting a bit here? I I think that Valve is happy with the amount of growth and profit it already

has and I think they're not going to this is a limit to their growth. Like um they definitely have a lot of I'd say free cash flow and if they really wanted they could do proper worldwide retail distribution and other distribution of Steam Deck for example. There's all kinds of stuff that they could do to be more aggressive on the hardware front. So, it is interesting to me that in some ways they're being um less aggressive than they could be because of some of their self-imposed limitations. Uh you know, and they could also uh sell sell hardware at um a um you know, uh uh at a loss and then actually get more people using using that hardware because they could offset that with the royalties they're getting from Steam. So there's a number of things that they're actually not being as aggressive as some other companies in. But I think for the size of their company, it's proving to be quite wise and uh I think they're pretty I think they're pretty happy where they are. But yeah, I do see more. You know, I think they've been very happy. There's one sort of crowning achievement of

Valve that is under discussed. You know, like the founders were ex Microsoft historically quite Microsoft skeptical. the fact that they've got Steam OS running completely on, you know, on Linux with uh no need to have a Windows install to play Windows games and that is fully accepted is kind of insane and it's taken them best part of 10 years to work that out. And I think obviously uh they're interested in things like um you like like yeah they're working on some Android that they have some Android emulation stuff working in order to get Quest games across to um to their new VR devices uh Steam Frame. So I think yeah some of their work there is really I think very interesting and will help make things a little bit more universal. But um I think they're happy where they are which is a really an interesting spot. It It's interesting because they don't seem interested in toppling [snorts] giants, but they do seem to love being able to point out the ways to kill a

giant. Like, I don't know if you've noticed, but it's really weak in its heel right here. Look how it squirms when we poke it. Um, it's fascinating. Speaking of giants, I want to move on to another storefront story, which is Battleet getting more third-party games. this kind of perpetual rumor. Blizzard actually just announced that they'll be doing a collaboration with CD Project Red, bringing uh The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered to the platform for PC. I don't understand why any of this I not only just matters, but why anybody's doing it. Like, why does it benefit CD Project Red in a real way to be on Battleet? And for Battleet, why do they want games that are not theirs on this? And for Microsoft, why do they want another storefront? Like, it seems just very messy to me.
I I think it is messy. And it might be something to do with there's often com,

you know, semi-competing P&Ls within large companies, right? So, whoever's in charge of the battleet P&L is in charge of the battleet P&L and not the Xbox PC game store P&L. So, they're probably interested in doing stuff. And I would say like, you know, it is possible that that Battleet has better momentum right now than than Microsoft's vanilla PC gaming store. So I I actually think that's a reason to try that. And I would also say I what I've seen when Epic Games Store has been successful. It's largely been on AAAish titles that are sort of like Fortnite adjacent. And you know, I think for example, I think they've made a lot of money on uh they had some giveaways for Grand Theft Auto and then people started playing Grand Theft Auto online on on Epic Games Store. And I suspect that uh I don't know what percentage Epic ended up getting of that. I can't quite recall, but um you know, my point is that that was actually successful crossmotion. So, I actually am sort of sold that for certain very large AAA games, you know,

the kind of pay people, I'm sure if you look in our data, the kind of people who play play your your your Call of Duties and your Warcrafts are interested in your Witchers. So, I think that from that micro point of view, it kind of makes sense, especially because they're doing like a theme skin in in in Diablo I, which Witcher skin in Diablo I, which I thought it was cute. Um, I I think from a macro strategy point of view, your your point is probably fair, but Ultimately, like I was just saying about Steam, it's just, you know, like it's very easy for them to add another game to battle.net. They have the store page layout stuff done. They have the payment stuff done. So,
why why wouldn't they?
Yeah. I guess the only reason I would think you might not want to is so much of games right now seem to be focused on locking you into the experience. And if you already have a closed garden, it's just your stuff and you get people opening it and you risk them spending their time in your garden on other people's things. Is that in your

interest? And I don't know. Like probably probably not an issue. That's just my excuse. Yeah. As a consumer there's like two ways I see this. One is more storefronts. Great. That means competition. We get things like Epic Games Store wanting to do the free games. these things that benefit like the consumer experience and and benefit some developers if they're getting good deals in partnership with that. But the other thing that I am cautiously skeptical of if this were to become a trend, like which is a big if, is the splitting up of content. And I worry that we would have like, well, if you want these five pieces of DLC, you're going to need to buy it on Battleet. And if you want these five pieces of DLC, you're going to need to buy it on Steam. sort of what we would see back in the day on the are you buying it on your Xbox or your PlayStation sort of thing. And again, that's like a huge if coming off of a single game being on a single platform, not likely to be a problem,

but it is like I don't know if it's going to be a trend. It is definitely in the back of my mind. It's it's feeling like I mean you mentioned the kind of certain things on platforms as we've discussed I think recently there's been more of this kind of like oh this game is just on a single console platform because you want to buy that platform. So I think there is starting to be pressure. I think people have realized some of the stuff they've been doing has only been making the monolithic platforms like Steam even more monolithic. So I think there is now some pressure to sort to to get people using
uh using other platforms because at this point if you don't own the platform it can be rough if you're a very large company I think so so I understand why people are doing this. I I I don't think um I'm not super worried about that. I actually think oddly battleet is I mean I know people have opinions about it but but battleet is sort of one of the cooler PC non- Steam platforms. So, I actually am am semi cool with them adding the right stuff to it. But I

don't think, yeah, if they just start adding Steam or Epic Game Store amounts of stuff to it, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. I don't think
I do like the idea of a hyper curated storefront. That sounds interesting to me of like it's only on there if we really think it's worth it. Could be neat. Uh, speaking of curation, let's get to the third story, which is Steam is testing personalization on the normally curated midweek deals, the ones that are featured on the front page, or I guess your Steam homepage, uh, from Mondays to Thursdays, and they're up to six midweek slots per week. I I'm not good at explaining this sort of thing. Can you explain like how this works?
Yeah, this is just an interesting thing. And Steam has not announced this. We just noticed it last week. Various people in our Discord pointed it out. Um, but basically, historically, it it's really good to get a Steam daily deal because you get really good front page featuring. And they've had these other deals, the midweek deal and the weekend

deal, which are tend to be a bit more curated. So, they're in theory even better than a than a daily deal. Uh, and what they've done in recent years is they've um made daily deal be much more automated. They've started automatically inviting people to daily deals. they have a system set up now where you can submit to Daily Deal. And so I think it's just making it much less hand handmade on their end. And then of course the question comes up uh for these bigger games. I don't think they necessarily want to do in fact I'm pretty sure they don't want to do um you know self-service for midweek and weekend. They want to reserve those for bigger games. But I think they've had sometimes had some trouble either getting time or getting the ability to find the right amount of games there. So, what they appear to be testing um is uh for at least at least they did last week. I don't know if it's a permanent a permanent thing is uh they're essentially going to use algorithms to work out uh what they think the midweek deal should be and it should be something on sale that you might like. And I saw a whole a whole bunch of games. There were some games that were very obvious that people had which were

just like, "Oh, this game is big and it's on sale right now." Uh but there were some that were like pretty obscure and weird. There was one there was one cat related one that was only 50% off uh that was not a well-known game at all. So I was in I don't know what it was about this person's Steam account which had that as recommended as a midweek deal. So I I think I think the Steam was going pretty far and wide with this. I presume they'll be testing this and sort of honing it and and I have heard some negativity from um devs or publishers about this because being in a midweek deal previously was a nice chunk of money and and the implication would be then I think it spread out a bunch over a whole bunch of games in a much more algorithmic way. But to be clear, I I don't know that this could be an AB test and this could not be something that that they're planning. It was just something that happened on the Steam store last week. Yeah. Well, I do think it feels of a trend because I think about this alongside the calendar feature, which I'm a huge fan of and we talk about at the end of most episodes of this show, but are we seeing a larger

shift of how Steam curates for individuals? And by that I mean it could this be all a piece of a larger like turn towards the algorithm turn towards we really want to make sure that when you have a Steam experience it is your Steam experience.
Yeah. I I think that Steam you know Steam's been leaning into this a little bit more for longer and longer. Like Steam has by far the most personalized front page of any PC console storefront for sure. And so they do spend a lot of time on oh you know your friends played this or if you played this you might like this. So they definitely really like that and I agree like even um you know even next fest recently they've changed like steam doesn't like monolithic charts. Steam does not like this game is is popular like that they really want this game is good for you. And so I think this is this is really another another example of this. And I think yeah, as they get more and more data and as they feel more confident in their data, I think they are turning on

more and more personalization. I actually think some of this personalization is pretty good. I think that I I do hear complaints from people because sometimes um you know, if you have more human curation, it curates games that are good but haven't sold enough copies. And if you are a game that is good but hasn't sold enough copies, then you probably want to be curated. But in many cases, you may not be machine curated like um Steam Steam's curation its end is largely like I want they want more people buying more good games that they will like and that and they don't care who made them which is interesting. They don't care if EA made them. They don't care if Microsoft made them. They just need to be a game in their system. So I think in many ways that is noble. Uh and I if I was running the system that's probably where I would go. But obviously there are some people who are kind of like, well before um I I knew someone at Steam or someone appreciate someone at Steam appreciated my game and they featured it and now I'm doing a lot better and that's happening less.
Yeah, I I overall enjoy it. Like I said,

like the calendar, it has largely worked for me. But I do worry a bit about when you get so deep into algorithmic curation, you allow people to step into their bubbles or get trapped by their bubbles and you suddenly aren't discovering things that you would have discovered in the more curated environment. And something I've always loved about Steam is I was not a fan of, you know, highway truck simulators or so many things that I would see on it. And that would be curious because it was curated in a way uh for a sale or something and I like gave it a try and suddenly I discovered something that I would love and I don't know if this is how they're doing their recommendations, their algorithmic recommendations, but I get a sense and I worry that it's based not just on what you buy, but on what you click and that can create a YouTube thumbnail effect that I think we're already kind of seeing on Steam

where people are. It's less about like is your game even great and more like can it just have that thumbnail that is going to get it to the top of the homepage which then increases your odds of selling it etc etc etc. So I don't I obviously don't think it's like the wrong choice. I just I I'm glad I guess what I'd say is I'm glad that they're going a bit slower with it because it can go wrong in so many ways as we've seen elsewhere.
Yeah, I I agree. I I personally have a lot of issues with filter bubbles. Like even filter bubbles from music. It's It's not games, but like I listen to a lot of music on YouTube and if I just leave YouTube running with autoplay, it'll go from the interesting mix that I did into a whole bunch of good but pretty generic stuff that has like 2 million views and I'm kind of like, ah,
that's not what like and so I really I really value some of that curation. I would say, you know, I I think that Steam is trying to be super specific with their curation around some things like for example sales. They have a bunch of first party sales that have

interesting themes that they curate and um and and I think Daily Deal is always going to be you're always going to see stuff from different genres in Daily Deal because that at least unless they change that because um Daily Deal is literally his six games that are um you know just like on on on sale right now. So, I think they're going to have some of that, but I think it's a good thing to it's a good thing to note like if we get too far down that then the first person shooter people will be seeing all first person shooters for the rest of time, right? So, yeah, it's fair.
And we won't be seeing changes in trends, which brings us to the final big section, which is how much has what's popular basically changed on Steam since 2021, five years ago. uh you did a piece on this on Game Discover Co. the newsletter. You can go and check it out right now everybody and you should because there are a number of things that you will discover quite quickly. Two I want to call out uh up top because they're relevant to games that just came

out. Uh and these are trends that the action RPG continues to be a super solid genre. it uh that covers like a wide variety of things from souls likes to action strategy hybrids. Uh but it's up to the fourth spot uh since 2021. That's I think actually has climbed from five to four, but it remains dominant. That is obviously great news for Oni Musha and Capcom. And then the other one that I saw was that JBRPGs, RTS, and turn-based strategy are on the way down. Um, but I wonder like how much of that is is there so much of that stuff or is that bad news for a game like Star Wars Zero Company, which we had even talked about last week, like how is that game going to perform?
Yeah. And um, you know, and and we and we'll get into this like a little bit later, but yeah, it's interesting that your point like just because what this is, we looked at unique tax. So, we looked at all games that sold more than 50,000 copies uh and also separately

more than $1 million in a particular year. And we looked at 2021 versus 2025. And yeah, what we discovered is there is some stuff that's still hanging out pretty high like action RPG, which I know covers a multitude of sins, but there's still a bunch of hit action RPGs in a bunch of big and big and small genres now. It's like a good hybrid. But it is true that um you know, turn-based strategy is down a lot. And my theory for that is it is true that um that Star Wars Zero Company is very explicitly a turn-based strategy game, but actually I think a lot of this these other genres are being wiped away a little bit, particularly RTS. Like I don't I don't think younger folks identify with real-time strategy game as a genre anymore. I've had this conversation with people. There's many games that have realtime strategy elements in them, but a lot of them just fit into Rogue Light and and Rogike and or you know tower defense in itself is strategy and real time last I checked, but it's not really identified very strongly with real-time

strategy as a name. So I think some of this is the nomenclature changing, but also some of this is just what people like uh changing. And certainly our big headline takeaway is that Rogue Like and Road Light um went up and they were tags in 2021, but almost no one was using them. You know, they are now number one and number two uh by a mile if you look at all games that sold at least 50,000 copies in 2025. So yeah,
this is so strange to me because like in 2021 the big thing is survival. That checks out to me. But Rogite and Rogike basically being off the boards, those games existed. Like, you know, you could play Spalunk, they were popular games enter the dungeon. Um, what has changed? Like, is it just that awareness of that genre name? And I was surprised to see both Rogue Like and Rogue Light would suggest that people know that there's a difference between the two broadly. Is is it is it just an

a awareness issue?
I I think it's become I and I would actually challenge you a little bit like I the the the games you mentioned were some of I think the significantly fewer that existed in 2021 that that that existed and they were in a certain genre. But I think what's happened what's happened is Rogike and Rogue Light as an idea the idea that you have runs and their repeatable runs but random stuff happens that has infiltrated almost every genre. So what's actually happened is we just have a whole bunch of games, you know, like Batro uh I'm sure has ro has a rog like or or or rogike tag. So but if you're looking in the days of Spelunky, you would not say, "Oh yeah, okay, these games are similar." So it's it's it's almost become I I counted it as a genre, but it's almost become a trait. And and actually we we cut out all traits, but um when we were doing this, so we didn't have like ridiculous traits like cute all over this. Um but um yeah but but yeah I would say it is midw midpoint between a genre and a trait and that's why it's just just ridiculously big. It

was it's um it's yeah it's super interesting.
You're you're right because if you tie it to let's say the bullet heaven or the vampire survivors like whatever you want to call it suddenly all of those I think fall technically into rogue like or light depending on the game. I saw Sirius Sam has a new game coming out that looks like it's a rogue light. So, you're right. Just everything has that as the secondary genre uh on top of everything else. There was there was another thing that you you kind of touched on briefly here was that million-doll measure of like how financially successful are these games and and where is the trend going for games that are maybe not hitting that threshold versus not? How how much has the pricing of hit games changed between 21 and 25?
Yeah, so we did some anecdotal actually less than less anecdotal. We we did a

little anecdote and then we looked at it specifically. So I I believe of the games that grossed at least 50,000 copies in 2021. It was 261. Uh they had a median USD price of $20 and then in 2025 it was all the way up to $469. and the medium was 15% less at$6.99. But I do think that you're seeing a lot more kind of five to$15 games. And that's why in addition to doing this more than $50,000 um copies thing, we also did a more than $1 million uh kind of ranking 2021 versus 2025 because then that sort of gets rid of the games that sold 100,000 copies that cost five bucks, but it includes the 50 the $50 games that sold 30 um 30,000 copies. And so we did see a different breakdown there. For example, FPS and JRPG drop a lot less. Um, hacken slash, hacken slash comes up even more because I think there's a lot of sort of souls likes that end up putting hacken slash. Um, by the way, we only counted the top five

tags here. We were quite restrictive with the tags. So, uh, you know, it really had to be a hacker slash has to be almost like one of the tags shown on the front page to make it in a in our kind of list here. So, um, yeah. So, I think we did find I think the danger is if you're just looking at all the little games that were successful and there's far more little cheap games that were successful in 2025 versus 2021, then you'll get them sort of overwhelming it. But I think if you cut it by more than a certain amount of dollars, then that sort of helped. But even then, to be clear, even then, Rogue Light and Pog were number one by a long way.
Yes. Yes. Um, uh, for people who are looking at this information, they're thinking about how this might influence their next games, what are some of the genres that you saw overperforming in the data or or even just starting to come back?
Yeah, what I haven't talked about is life life sim. And I'm actually a big fan right now. Like, in my opinion, there's not enough good cozy games and cozy games are quite reliable long-term

sellers. So, this is, you know, I've, for example, I've worked with No More Robots um quite a bit because I'm I'm an investor and I sort of, you know, and I see how their games do. They've had a number of games like Let's Build a Zoo and Spirity and others that have done really nicely as kind of like, you know, Cozy. Um, I mean, not not both of those are precisely life sim, but you know, certain certainly certainly Spirity has a lot of lifesim elements in it. And so, yeah, that's just the one that I'm pulling out there. But I actually think um I think there's still some space in that kind of life sim area. And we did find based on um based on on the 50,000 copies sold, it was it was all the way up to number six life sim. So certainly if I look at the top stuff here uh for copies in 2025, it was sort of yeah, the rogike stuff, action RPG, base building, life sim, citybuer um and then actually interestingly racing and sports were sort of in the mix. And I think that's mainly because there are more niche racing games than there used to be. I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend people do a racing game unless they

really understand what they're doing in that space. But um yeah. Yeah. I mean I think there's some good stuff there. Oh, and also also um I just talked about this in the newsletter, but the the concept of incremental games or idlers doing very well right now. Um I think I think idler I talked about this in the news. I think idler is somewhat the wrong phrase for this. A lot of these incremental games are quite active. They're really just like distilled distilled versions of more complicated games. But I think the incremental space is is really interesting right now and and there's a lot of very catchy games in the kind of 7 to$12 range you can make that will do well. So that's some of the areas that I think are interesting right now.
There was one tucked in there that I am personally hopeful about which is immersive sims. Is it am I getting my hopes up? Could Could we see immersive sims come back a little bit?
Oh, yeah. I I I touched on this briefly. I wasn't completely sure that people were tagging immersive sim like the the pure definition of immersive sim, which

is really I think uh the DSX thief is right. The uh the the pure or system shock I guess was the OG, right? So, so I think I mentioned there have been a handful of immersive sims in that sense that have sort of come back that have been interesting. Um, I didn't take a real close look at who who tagged Immersive Sim, but it but it was on its way up. It's it's number 15 up 13 spaces for games with more than a million dollars revenue. So, I think people are starting to see it. Whether they're tagging it correctly or not, people are starting to see it as a tag that people are interested in. And that's probably a good sign. Yeah, it is interesting how the words lose their old meanings and take on new ones. Whether that is RTS or MSIM or bullet heaven and bullet hell. I mean, so often as somebody who's been doing this for too long, I feel like I open a game like, "Oh, great. A hacken slash." And then I see it and I'm like, "Wait, what? This is That's not what a hacken slash is at all." Uh, but that's that's

how words work. I I I I cannot fight the ocean. I want to talk about video games. What we had last week, what we have this week. Let's start with last week. Uh I I assume it was a big one. How did things go?
Yeah. And Star Wars Zero Company was the big release of the week and it really has done well. It's up from here. When I put it in the New Zealand Friday, it had about 70,000 CCU. I think it's gone up from there. I will say I was a little me and some people I was talking to were a little bit concerned when it came out that there was a slight fumble on sort of some bugs and some tech stuff in the first 24 to 48 hours and it was at mixed reviews and that is never a good sign and sometimes you have trouble recovering from that but from what I've seen it's a pretty strong game. So I think they're hot fixing a bunch of those problems and uh I think it is going to be a strong seller. It's not however and this is not a surprise selling that well on console from what I've seen. We only have new early console stats, but it did it did launch on PlayStation, Xbox as well, and I'm not sure it's selling particularly well there, but I think it's going to be, you

know, it's going to be a multi-million seller and hopefully I doubt it. I doubt it was a cheap game, so I'm guessing it will will be profitable. Um, but, you know, you I doubt it's profitable right this second, but yeah, that it was it was the it was the big winner of the week. And then I think the other stuff was all fine. There were some Metal Gear Solid remakes that people liked particularly particularly Metal Gear Solid 4. Aliens Fighting Elite 2 hasn't had got the best reviews. Um it's people I think think it's not quite enough of a step up from from the first. And then um and then Resonance of Plague Legacy. It looks like a really great game. Um I've been a little disappointed and it has 94% positive reviews, but it hasn't had the best CCUs on Steam. It's about 5,000 CCUs and I think that will be a little disappointing to them. And I I have seen it is it is apparently a different game to the previous plague tales. It's a lot more actiony and I think um most people like that. Um but um you know I I don't know if it's um scaled quite where they want it right now.

I don't know what is going on with that game in that I've enjoyed the games in the past and I basically didn't know the game was coming out. Barely knew it even existed. Um and that's not great. like I I work in the space. So like I I don't I don't know if it's a a skill issue on my part or or what's going on or if it is just that it is so crowded because of the GTA congestion that everybody's trying to get on the highway at the exact same time. I think the same thing with Alien. I will say with Star Wars Zero Company, I had that same wonder when I saw the mixed hit and a lot of people being very mad and there's a mix of people being mad because of bugs and a mix of people being mad because of woke. Uh, but it does look like they're digging theirelves out of it. I also started to wonder how much of this is just part and parcel with the kind of XCOM formula. I saw somebody on Blue Sky tweet or Sker, whatever you want to call it, like, I know this is a true XCOM

game because I've replayed the same mission three times because I keep hitting random bugs and I can't stop playing it. And that was literally me last night. Like, especially if you were playing with a controller, it it is wonky and one of the best experiences I've had in months. Like, true XCOM. it they it it gets you and and they they have nailed it. So, I can also see this being a game that as the patches come in and as the mod community I mean the mod community has already really gotten their hands on this game in a big way of um repairing a lot of this stuff. So, very excited to watch where this one goes.
Yeah, I think it's going to do good. Oh, and by the way, a final note on the plague tail. I think one of the issues they had with it was they knew the game's quite different to the previous two. So, that's so they buried plague tail a little bit in the name. Of course, the name is Res Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. And I think the reason they did that was they were very worried about pissing off Playtale fans of the original, I guess, more stealthy gameplay, but it probably did bury the

lead a little bit that there was a new Playtail game coming out. So, that's that's rough.
It's it's the thing of like always having to remind yourself that you're uh most hardcore fans are maybe 5% and there's the 95% of people who are just happy that there's another thing from a series that they're vaguely familiar with. Um, let's talk about this upcoming week because it has one of the big Well, I guess it has two of the biggies basically. Uh, what do we have ahead of us?
Yeah. No, this is a real big week cuz Yeah, cuz because we have Blood of Dawn Walker, which has been, you know, been getting a ton of hype. It's ex Witcher, folks. It's got vampires in it. That's a good combo. It seems to have been getting I saw the press reviews just hit for it and it's getting, I think, great, but not outstanding reviews, maybe. But I think that will be plenty enough to uh to have it do very well. Um the new Onimushia also out, I think that's actually quite similar. Also great, maybe not absolutely outstanding review. So I think those games are going to do very well. Like if you look at their wish list, 1.7 mil, 1.27 mil, and

they're going to do they're both going to do great on console as well, which is which is key nowadays. Like a lot of games don't. So yeah, I think those are the big guys. And then also also this puzzle part cult game um called Bomb Banana, right? which is the one where you have to defuse stuff like that that is coming out and I think that should be a pretty big it's already been a big hit as a demo but uh I think that should be a a pretty big kind of like friends love Jason hit as well. Yeah.
Yeah. In the past few weeks we've been doing the compare my uh recommendations to see if I'm in a bubble or not. Didn't even do it this week because I knew that Don Walker and Oni Mush are just going to be everywhere. Uh very excited to watch what happens with Don Walker. a game that I think is awesome and reminds me so much of Witcher 2. Nice
of
it's trying a lot of things. It's a bit of a mess in some very strange ways, but the charm and the scale and the ambition are

it feels like a game that could be growing month after month. Like it it doesn't just stop right right at launch. So very excited to see that. if you're excited to play Oni Musha. Uh it's a big week. I'm excited. I do want to wrap up, but but first I have a question for you which more is more of a is this just where things are at now was uh scrolling through my feed on Steam. I'm just going to reveal a little bit about myself here. Don't feel comfortable about it, but I've got to do it. Whenever I see a not safe for work game that is like very uh what I would say controversial looking, you know, I'm going to click it and I want to know everything about it. There was a NSFW sex game about being a moderator for Facebook
and I needed to know everything about this absolutely wild game. Whenever I do this though, I discover there's an entire world of like partnerships between studios and stuff. And what I found was there was a sale

recently on Steam that was a hintai and furry sale. And I guess my question for you is how many sales are happening on Steam that we just never see unless you happen to be in those communities.
Yeah, there's a whole bunch of not safe for work stuff that is not not not well covered. And I do want to note like actually after my newsletter last Friday, someone uh made a comment saying uh hey I know you don't normally cover not safe for work stuff but there was actually a big not safe for work launch um last week on Steam and and there was it's called Strip Strip Jeong. It was a strip mahong game and um and it actually did get uh what was 3500 ccu which is extremely good. Um, so, um, yeah. So, so just in general with adult games, like on our on our game discover code back end, we always have we actually had to do some more sophisticated filtering to make sure they didn't pop back on, but

we always have a filter which is please ignore these, but we also have the ability to um just do a filter which is all of those things. And yeah, there's like a there's like a ton of stuff there. And in terms of that sale, um, yeah, I actually don't necessarily know who that sale was shown to. probably mainly um if you're in a sale, there will be that kind of uh head that banner in in a details page. So, I'm guessing I'm guessing Steam probably didn't do any fun page uh for this for this particular sale, but anyone who went to a game that was in the sale would have seen it listed uh on the details page for that game. So, so that's my suspicion about how word might have got out about that. But um yeah, interesting, right? Hey, I am just endlessly fascinated by this corner of the market and having done episodes on post games about it and started following more people on Blue Sky, I'm always shocked when I hear there was a game called um Train 45 sold 220,000 copies in its first month. That's bonkers numbers. Like so many devs would

would kill for those numbers. Um, and I did not know it existed other than somebody tweeting about it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm I'm looking at all I'm looking on not for Safe for Work August right now and we have five, six, seven, eight. We have like 12 games that sold more than 10,000 copies uh in in in their first few days on sale when they're all adult. So, yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty big market.
That's wild. Uh, well, maybe that will be a topic for another episode down the line. For now, though, we should start to wrap things up. Thank you all for listening. We appreciate it so much. If you enjoy the show, please be sure to share it with friends and other people who you think might enjoy it in industry. Uh it means the world to us and it helps the show keep on going. Beyond that though, that's a wrap. I am Chris Plant and this is my guest, Simon Carlos. Not my guest, my co-host, the person who makes this all happen. You should be reading Game Discover Co. Simon. Save me from myself and wrap this up, [laughter] please. I think I've

decided that you'll be my guest for the rest of the year. But yes,
I think that's good.
Yes. Uh but yeah, it was it was a great uh thanks to everyone for tuning in and we'll see you again next time. Bye.