Throughout the year I like to take the temperature of Steam to answer common questions I get such as
“How many games are releasing?”, “what genres are doing well?”, “Are we in a AI-generated slopocalypse?”
The following is my Q1 report on Steam. These are games that were released January, February, and March 2026. I know, it’s May. Well I was busy. Sorry it is late. I will do a Q2 report at the end of June.
This data was sampled on April 2nd 2026 by downloading all releases in the Q1 range from VGInsights. In the charts I also present data sampled from Q1 2024, and 2025. Those were also sampled in April of those years from VGInsights. Note I forgot to archive the full steam data for 2025 Q1, I only recorded the games that reached at least 1000 reviews so a few charts below are missing that “whole Steam” data. Note that since I sampled the data over a month ago there are games that have reached 1000 reviews that are not in this data set. We will see those games show up in Q2.
Are there too many games?
Q1 2026 has already seen more games released in total than any other year. It is about 23% more than last year. Here is a graph of the number of releases every year by quarter.
My estimation is that 25,799 games will be released in 2026.
One other detail to note is that most games don’t release until the second quarter. Q1 is very quiet.
Are they slop?
Yes. Pretty much.
Every journalist loves to write a negativity-biased tinged headline that states: “<x> number of games released this year, too many games!”
But when you dig in deeper you will realize that about 75% of games released every year are by first time devs, hobbists with no intention of profit, or weird shovel-ware scams.
This graph shows that overall the number of games in the top tier buckets of games with 50+ reviews earned in the first quarter grew by 31%. But the number of 0-50 review games grew by 48%.
In 2024 for every one 1000+ review game, there were 26 games that had only 0-9 reviews. In 2026 there are now 38 for every game at the 1000+ tier.
Basically there is a pipe of low review games that flows under the city streets of Steam. Nobody sees them. Nobody buys them. Valve has built a system that smothers games that have 0 marketing behind them. This is what prevents Steam store front from turning into an AI slop house.
Genres change ALL THE TIME RIGHT?
Maybe.
My opinion is you don’t really need to “chase trends” because they don’t really run very fast. You can mozy over to trends or maybe saunter over to trends. Really I think “chasing trends” just means you learn that the culture of Steam and PC gaming is different than the culture of console games and that a game that is “Nintendo Coded” will usually have a harder time on Steam.
The following graph represents the genres of games that earned 1000+ reviews in Q1 of each year. I personally went through each 1000+ review game and assigned one and only one genre to it. I also looked at just 1000 review games because they have reached “real Steam” meaning Valve rewards these games with extra visibility. It is possible to hit real steam with 500 reviews but there are so many that I don’t have time to do my personalized genre assignment. I have been hand assigning genres since 2024 so I can chart the trends over time.
This is why I say genres don’t change that much. You will see that the top genres are very consistent year to year (thick lines are always at the top, thin lines always at the bottom). Remember that the data set here is not very big so the small sample size can have wild swings. For instance Tower defense appears to whiplash year to year. But in Q1 2024 there was 1 TD, Q1 2025, there were 2 TD, and again in Q1 2026 there was 1. It was just one extra game.
Simulation has taken over “Management”
This is a subtle genre difference in how I classify genres.
I consider top-down, economic-focused games “Management.” An example is Minami Lane which launched in Q1 2024 (I wrote about it here). This is a classic “management” screenshot where you set prices and products and monitor how they impact customers.
The success of 3D, first-person focused games like Supermarket Simulator have brought in a raft of more 3D simulators that seem to have taken over Management games.
In Q1 of 2026 Retro Rewind took off and is sitting at 5000+ reviews. In both management and simulation games you set prices, and buy supplies, and see how customers react.
However, in addition to the First person camera perspective, a simulation game asks you to perform the action you are doing where a management game does it with a single button click. A management game will give you a button that says “Clean the toilets” a simulation game will make you actually do it.
SO MANY Deckbuilders?
For some reason everyone always complains about HOW MANY roguelike deckbuilders there are. But as I showed last year, there really aren’t really that many released every year.
There were 3 Deckbuilders that did well in Q1 where in the past only 1 per year
- One Turn Kill
- Slay the Spire 2 (of course)
- Dream of Corpse Lady (what a game name)
What happened to NSFW?
This one is actually surprising. There was only 1 adult game in Q1 to reach the top spots and it is a horror themed one. Sin Spire [NSFW obviously].
Golden age still?
Last year I said indie gaming was having a bit of a golden age where success was determined by how fun your game was, not based on how EPIC and how long you worked on it. Small games from small teams could do VERY WELL.
How is it going in 2026? Still good! Top genres that had lots of 1000 reviews games:
- IDLE: At this point in 2025 there were 5, 2026 there were 4 of them (Berry Bury Berry, Scritchy Scratchy, Gamblers Table, Horripilant). Now the denominator is huge now. The number of idle games is increasing but I still think the floor for a well-made idle game is quite high. Even if a game doesn’t reach 1000+ reviews they are still doing well (e.g. A Game About Making A Planet – sales numbers, MMO98 – sales numbers)
- FRIENDSLOP: the most hits by Q1 3 of them (YAPYAP, Super Battle Golf, Roadside Research)
- HORROR: A drop from 7 in 2025 to 3. Some neat ideas here (Lucid Blocks, Pathologic 3, Subliminal).
- HORROR ADJACENT: There were a couple games that weren’t pure horror and I wasn’t confident enough to classify them as such. Creature Kitchen was horror-like but I called it “Creature Collector”. As mentioned NSFW Sin Spire is horror + porn.
- VAMPIRE SURVIVOR GEN 2: There were 2 vampire survivor likes that broke through in Q1. R.I.P. – Reincarnation Insurance Program is quite polished for a small team. BUT Vital Shell shows that if you have a cool aesthetic and adicting gameplay you can make it work.
- GAMBLING WITH EXTRA STEPS: Raccoin: Coin Pusher Roguelike, Gamblers table.
Adventure! Dude with a sword!
You might see that “Adventure” is one of the top genres and consistent year to year. What is that?
I use “Adventure” as the catch-all genre for games where a dude with a sword goes around and has an adventure but is not souls like.
Here are the Adventure games of Q1
- ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN Suda51 has a new dude-with-a-sword-game.
- Homura Hime
- REANIMAL (Not quite a sword game but they do go around on an adventure)
- Crimson Desert
- Duet Night Abyss
Despite the consistent popularity I don’t recommend first time (or even 5th-time) indies attempt the dude with a sword genre. Look at the graphics of all of these games. They have hours of content, sky-high production values, and controls that are top-tier.
It is very hard to break through here with a 2d pixel-art dude-with-a-sword game and it will take you years to produce.
Other details
- Raccoon City! Racoons are the animal of 2026. We have Creature Kitchen, Funi Raccoon Game, Raccoin: Coin Pusher Roguelike
- Prologue trick is out of style – I think Steam’s recent demo algorithm changes where demos can appear on “Trending Free” has made the practice of releasing a free version of your game and calling it a prologue too complicated. You don’t need it. Just make a demo.
- VR still doesn’t have an audience. There were 0 VR games in Q1 2026 top earners. Well WW2 flight sim Aces of Thunder does support VR but the Steam page copy is adamant throughout that you don’t need VR to enjoy it.
- The fall of puzzle from #2 genre in 2024? No Puzzle games have always done poorly on Steam. You are just noticing a sampling issue. In 2024 the company 100 Cozy Games would spam the store with tons of free hidden object games. So the high number of puzzle games in 2024 was due to one company with one business model. Example games are 100 Dino Cats. 100 March Cats, 100 Capitalist Cats, 100 Ninja Cats that somehow all got 1000 reviews. The technique isn’t working for whatever reason because recent release 100 Los Angeles Cats has only 18 reviews.
- Not a single 2D platformer in 2026 top games. There were two 2D Metroidvanias but not a true platformer.