Dying Light The Beast, Hades, and SO MANY INDIES are killing it on Steam
Plus, an update on Palworld’s sales, Hades II’s early-access numbers, and Alinea putting our money where our mouth in the name of transparency.
Before hopping into our data for last week’s best-selling Steam games (including Dying Light: The Beast and Hades), we wanted to give an update on our Palworld estimates.
Palworld has sold 25M+ copies
That’s right: Palworld has added 25 million copies sold to its Pokédex Paldeck. It’s timely, as its makers have just announced a new farming sim, Palworld: Palfarm. It’s very Animal Crossing- and Stardew-coded, and – honestly – it’s a smart direction.
You can see the platform splits for Palworld in this screenshot of its game page in the Alinea platform:
The screenshot also showcases the new aggregated view for our game pages. As our clients know, we also maintain the biggest database of official milestone numbers in our platform (25K strong and growing).
Transparency is key for us. So, we’ve also added relevant public milestones alongside our estimates for each game in our platform, letting you directly compare and benchmark our estimates. Here’s the ‘’lifetime players’’ tab on the Palworld game page:
This is one of the biggest platform updates we’ve had, and our developers and product folks have hit it out of the park (as always).
Watch the video below to see all these cool features in action, as well as how responsive, easy-to-use, and transparent our platform is (with plenty of extra data nuggets for you as well):
If you’d like to see our platform in action for yourself – and do your own benchmarks – reach out to us here to nab a three-day unlimited-access trial.
Now let’s get onto last week’s Steam top 10.
Dying Light: The Beast tops a million on Steam
Last week’s top-selling game on Steam was Dying Light: The Beast, which launched on September 18. To date, our estimates show that The Beast has now sold over a million copies on Steam.
And The Beast has sold over 1.5 million across all platforms. With this standalone expansion, Techland has successfully iterated on its winning formula of brutal first-person combat and parkour-based exploration.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of early adopters have been franchise supporters. Around 82% of The Beast’s Steam players have played the original Dying Light on Valve’s platform. Roughly 77% have played Dying Light 2.
September’s other notable releases have continued to sell well, too. Borderlands 4 was the #2 best-selling game on Steam last week, with over 300K copies sold (catch a Borderlands deep dive here), while Silksong took #3 with over 250K on the platform (another deep dive for you).
Indies smashed it on Steam across the board last week
Silksong wasn’t the only indie in last week’s Steam copies-sold ranking:
PEAK (#4) shifted another 150K+ copies according to our estimates, helping the viral co-op climbing game pass 12 million copies sold overall (that’s Steam revenues of over $70 million).
No, I’m Not Human (#5), a first-person horror visual novel from Russian dev Trioskaz, released on Sep 15. The haunting psychological-horror tale, which has strong social-strategy-game elements, sold over 200K copies last week, with roughly 40K of the audience coming from the dev’s home market of Russia.
Shape of Dreams (#6) sold another 150K+ last week, bringing this co-op MOBA-like roguelite’s copies sold to almost 400K. It launched last week at #5 – and between Borderlands 4’s and Silksong’s launches to boot – but has still managed to carve a niche for itself thanks to its strong foundation and community support (more details in last week’s newsletter).
Hades (#7) managed to sell over 150K copies last week on Steam (and crossed 9 million sold on the platform overall). The iconic roguelite celebrated the fifth anniversary of its 1.0 launch last week. In celebration, Supergiant Games slashed Hades’ price by 75% (from $24.99 to $6.24) and made a deal with Xbox to get it back on Game Pass.
As you can see below, Hades’ new price on Steam is its lowest yet, resulting in its most copies sold in a week since the price dropped to $8 in May last year (it’s second lowest price, also visible in the chart):
However, all of last week’s Hades promotions also lead nicely into the 1.0 release of Hades II this Thursday. Let’s check in on how the sequel is doing in early access.
Hades 2 has already sold 2M+ copies in early access, but the floodgates are about to open
Ahead of its full launch on September 25, Hades II has sold over 2 million copies on Steam (revenues of $50M+) since its early-access launch back in May 2024. Around 1.5 million of those happened in the first two months after the early access launch.
Hades II is Supergiant’s first-ever sequel (can’t blame them after the monumental success of the original). It’s been in development for almost five years now, including over a year in active development with the community.
Since launching Hades II in early access, Supergiant has been taking feedback from the early-access community (and actually implementing it). I’ve been a lurker in the official Discord for years, and seeing some of the back-and-forth feedback directly appear in the patch notes has been – as we say in Wales – lush.
Hades II has also had three juicy content updates alongside smaller patches in its time as an early-access game. And with each new update, Steam DAUs have spiked:
When Hades II enters 1.0 later this week, we expect Steam DAUs to shoot to a couple of million at least. And there’s a few reasons for that that are typical of high-profile early-access games hitting 1.0:
Returning early-access players will come back to see the fresh updates and experience the full release (including the game’s true ending and achievements).
Patient Hades fans will check out the sequel for the first time, as many gamers want to experience the full game after the early-access period.
Word of mouth, driven by media coverage and prominent placement on the Steam and Switch store rankings, will attract curious players who are somehow unfamiliar with Hades.
Game Pass, which just added OG Hades again, will also convert some Xbox players to day-one Hades II buyers.
Hades II will be another 2025 indie zeitgeist moment in the industry. We also expect its current record of 104K Steam CCUs to be blown out of the water when the floodgates (or Cerberus-guarded gates to the underworld) finally open later this week.
We’ll be covering the 1.0 release next week, so hit subscribe below to get the best estimates in your inbox as soon as they’re ready!
Even good games fall through the cracks these days – hell, great ones can, too. Community-driven development, when done right, can help developers build something in a market marred with discoverability issues, as shown with the success of Shape of Dreams.
Silksong aside, community-driven development is something basically all of this year’s successful indies have had in common – expected and surprise hits alike.
Community is king.
The last word
Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover.
[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things game market data? We’d love to chat!]