The Game Awards reveals that blew up on Steam
Plus, Expedition 33 sold another 200K copies since its big Game Awards sweep, boosting its daily copies sold by 6x, mostly via Steam and PS5.
The Game Awards is a marketing event as well as a celebration and awards ceremony. Alongside Summer Games Fest, it’s grown into one of the more significant platforms for boosting immediate, measurable audience interest for newly announced titles.
In this third edition of our three-part Game Awards series (catch part 1 and part 2), we’re looking at the Steam followers of the newly announced games.
Let’s dive in, before looking at how Expedition 33 benefitted from its TGA sweep.
The top Game Awards reveals by Steam followers
Post-event Steam followers tell us a lot about the latent demand of known IP on PC – as well as the new concepts that resonate with core gaming audiences (for the games with Steam pages):
Total War: Warhammer 40,000 was the winning new-game reveal by Steam engagement, conquering 51K followers after its cinematic reveal. It’s a testament to the IP pairing of Creative Assembly’s grand strategy mastery and Warhammer 40K, which is quietly a huge franchise inside gaming and out. Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is also the biggest new reveal by wishlist numbers. So far, this one is resonating more with Warhammer fans than Total War ones. About 58% of the wishlisters have played Vermintide 2, 57% have played Space Marine 2, and 50% have played Total War: Warhammer III, but the crossover with non-Warhammer Total War games is 30% or under.
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, an upcoming remake of the OG Tomb Raider, generated a respectable 18K new Steam followers. While this is solid and shows the enduring strength of the Tomb Raider brand, Amazon must convert the nostalgia into modern engagement. Legacy of Atlantis was also the #2 new reveal by wishlisters. Over half of the wishlisters played the Tomb Raider reboot from 2013, suggesting that the core fanbase is interested. But the challenge remains: winning over gamers who aren’t wearing those rose-tinted Raider specs. Luckily, developer Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog have what it takes to make a banger, so I’m hopeful.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is off to a flying start (sorry) with 17K followers. Bandai Namco has successfully mobilised the Ace Combat series’ loyal following here, as it’s been almost seven years since Ace Combat 7. The upcoming instalment is on track to be a modest financial success when it launches in 2026, driven (or piloted?) by premium pricing and high engagement within its specific demographic – even if the total follower count is lower than blockbuster IP. Around 54% of Ace Combat 8 wishlisters on Steam previously played Ace Combat 7
Control Resonant secured 15K new followers. Remedy’s unique brand of kinetic action and esoteric storytelling has its dedicated fans. And Remedy’s technical prowess on PC always attracts the ‘’my PC costs $5,000’’ crowd. The path tracing’s going to be wild. Anyway, the follower gain builds on the critical and stylistic success of the first Control, following the slow sales of Remedy’s previous Alan Wake 2 (mostly due to the game skipping Steam, which is fair – Epic funded it). Random live-service experiment aside (sorry, FBC: Firebreak), Control has grown into an established, anticipated property, with a high-value audience ready to engage with the signature narrative complexity and distinct visual identity that Remedy nails.
No Law, the only new IP in the top 5, amassed 13K Steam followers. It’s published by Krafton and developed by Neon Giant (The Ascent), which is pivoting from the isometric perspective of The Ascent to a more realistic FPS cyberpunk experience. Set in the “cybergrunge metropolis” of Port Desire, No Law leverages the team’s previous shooter pedigree, emphasising brutal gun feel, impact, and chaotic combat flow. It promises significant player agency, rewarding guns-blazin’ players and sneaky ones alike via its emergent, systems-driven encounters. Sounds like an immersive sim. Hell yeah. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that 60% of No Law’s wishlisters previously played Cyberpunk 2077.
(Looking for our Steam wishlist estimates? Reach out to get a free trial of our platform and see for yourself! Browse wishlist data for any game on Steam, now including proactive wishlist-to-purchase intel, conversion likelihood, wishlister segments by playtime, library sizes, and more.)
Now onto the big winner…
Expedition 33 dominated The Game Awards, helping it pass a new copies-sold milestone
Expedition 33 dominated the show, winning nine awards in total, including the coveted GOTY award and – for some reason – best indie game.
The resulting coverage and buzz helped Expedition 33 hit 6M copies sold overall (and boosted Game Pass engagement, too):
We can see the uptick at the end of the cumulative-copies-sold chart above. Overall, Expedition 33 has shifted another 200K+ copies since the Game Awards aired. Around 76% came from Steam, while 21% from PS5
That means just 3% of Expedition 33’s copies sold since The Game Awards came from Xbox. Clearly, Game Pass is cannibalising premium sales here:
Fewer than 10K Expedition 33 copies have been sold on Xbox since the Game Awards win.
Yet, around 52K Xbox users accessed E33 via Game Pass for the first time.
You’ve got to imagine that at least 1/3 of those players would have bought E33, given the other platforms’ sales, even if we consider Xbox’s lower comparative audience.
Either way, the Game Awards has certainly had a positive impact on Expedition 33 engagement across the board.
Zooming in on the copies-sold-per-day delta gives a clearer example of how much the Game Awards win boosted sales:
As you can see:
Before the show on December 11, E33 was performing solidly, thanks to some timely discounts covered here, with strong market momentum from its nomination
In the three months leading up to the wins, Expedition 33 maintained an average daily sales volume of approximately 12K copies.
Following the Game Awards, though, the massive press coverage, social media discourse, and front-page placement across every major platform triggered even more sales.
Daily sales volume skyrocketed by a factor of nearly six, with the post-wins averageing 69K copies per day, with a peak of 92K on December 13, the Saturday after the Game Awards.
The Game Awards wins helped Expedition 33 sell its most copies in one day since May, when it was first exploding.
The commercial impact of Expedition 33’s historic nine-award sweep at The Game Awards was immediate and dramatic, providing a pretty definitive case study in the power of critical acclaim.
However, many of the other nominees and winners saw very little boosts (if any) following the event, so TGA is not a guaranteed post-event sales engine for every winner and nominee.
When a game wins GOTY and hits the zeitgeist, like previous winners BG3, Elden Ring, and now E33, our data shows TGA can have a force-multiplier effect after the event, too.
And as we previously mentioned, many nominees got boosts to their copies sold in the build-up to the event. While TGA isn’t perfect (what is?), it remains a fantastic celebration of our industry and one of the few yearly markers of what’s to come.
Hats off to Geoff Keighley and the team.
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