To stay abreast of the Steam marketplace I like to track how the Steam ecosystem is performing, what types of games are doing well and what we can see the end of the year looking like. 

Every quarter I like to take the pulse of Steam. We just finished the first quarter and this blog post is proverbial finger on Steam’s wrist.

Are there too many games?

First question: are we drowning in an AI Slop wasteland that extinguishes all hope of human creativity like everyone fears?

No. No we are not. 

The total number of games released in 2025 so far is 4,785. 

Last year at this same time there were 4,147. 

If I graph the last 6 years of quarters you will see that although there are more in 2025, not significantly so.

Look at that little dot, it isn’t that much higher than the 2024 line.

Are the number of games released on Steam growing exponentially?

No. Exponential means the percentage of increase is increasing. Faster and faster growth. 

But the growth rate so far is actually down. 

Here is the year over year growth percentage since 2019. Note that 2025 has a slower growth than 2024. 10% slower growth.

So maybe this is just a coy plot by the AI overlords? Maybe they are lulling us into a sense of security by not releasing too much AI slop? Maybe they are playing 4D chess and are just waiting until they reach general intelligence before flooding Steam with slop?

Well, when it happens, I will report it here. But until then, humans are still in charge.

What types of games are selling? Narrative!

Looking at the indie games that have earned at least 1000 reviews so far this year we can get a picture of the taste profile of the Steam audience. I went game by game and identified the primary genre for each one. 

You can actually watch me do it in real time over almost 3 hours. Here is a 3-part youtube series:

Check this graph of the number of games in each genre

What really stood out to me was how popular narrative games have become. 8 Narrative games hit 1000+ reviews so far. Almost double the number of Horror games. Note that many of these narrative games have dark, horror-like settings and it was close call on my side to list them as horror or Narrative. 

Narrative has been rising rapidly over the years. I looked back at old posts about the hit games of each year and could see the rise of hit narrative games:

2022: 17 narrative games
2023: 20 narrative games
2024: 30 narrative games

Narrative games are my bucket for visual novels, and walking simulators. Games where the story takes precedent over the actual gameplay mechanics. Not saying they have bad mechanics. I just mean if the story were bad, the game would be bad.  On the other hand, we are well aware from other genres that if you have a bad story, so what? It doesn’t matter as long as the mechanics are still fun. 

Here are the 9 Narrative games of 2025

One reason for this increase could be because of the influence of the Chinese player base. Chinese is now the most common language among players. The Roottrees are Dead was the only Narrative game lacking a Chinese translation.

Horror

Steam fans still LOVE horror. If you look back at 2024, there were a total of 47 horror games and only 30 Narrative. Those have swapped places. 

It could be that more horror games are released in the 3rd and 4th quarter because, you know, Halloween. So as the year progresses the genre could surpass Simulation and Narrative still.

Simulation

Simulation games also saw a major surge this year. This is understandable with the success of Supermarket Simulator, and Schedule I. Steam fans really really like simulating a job, particularly if it is blue collar. 

What genres are missing in the hit list?

Although the year is just starting it was surprising not to see any of the following genres:

Platformer (both 2D and 3D)
Metroidvania 
Puzzle

I know they are typically low sellers but I usually see at least one of them. But no so far.

This also surprised me that I didn’t see any of these genres in the list:

4X
City builder

But! City Builder?!? Chris you said that was a hot genre?!?

My hunch here is that City Builders and Tower Defense have been merging lately. 

A perfect example of this is Border Pioneer. I classified it as a Tower defense but it operates on top of a heavy city builder secondary game (“City Builder” is the game’s 3rd tag) 

Similarly Cataclismo is a 4X, City Builder, Strategy game. I classified it as Strategy. 

It really seems like the last couple of base building / city games have relied on a heavy layer of defensive strategy gameplay. I think it really speaks to the times (man). There is a general air of defensive isolationism in the world right now (man) and games just speak to our times. 

Art Style?

Along with genre, I also like to classify games based on their art style. 

Notable here is the rise of Anime art styles. I think this correlates with the rise of Narrative games and Chinese players. Only 3 narrative games were NOT anime. 

Demo live after launch

I think it is a true act of bravery to keep your FREE demo live even after you launch. Too many devs are afraid it might cannibalize sales. You can see the fear in the data: only 5 of the 65 hit games had their demo live at the time of my data collection. 

My gut tells me that if you have a hit game, there is something MAGIC about it that goes beyond first-play novelty. The game is addictive. So my theory is if you reach this level of sales, giving a free sample would not hurt your sales. Demos increase chances of content creators finding it, lowering the barrier of entry to future fans, and allowing haters to realize they hate the game without buying it so they don’t leave a bad review. 

And there might be some truth to that “pacify the haters” approach. Although there are only 5 games to analyze, the games with live, post-launch-demos have a 10% higher review score than those who took it down.

  • Average review score for games with demo still up: 94.7%
  • Average review score for games without a demo: 84.6%

Those games with the demo live post launch

So if you have a hit game, consider putting the demo live. You might just improve your review score. If it works, let me know.

Don’t forget. I am running my annual micro-conference and Spring Sale. You can see all special deals over on my course page.