The Steam games that blew up after gamescom
We look at the top gamescom games by new Steam followers, the release slate for the rest of the year (with Steam wishlist data), and top Steam games from last week. Steamin'.
After a fun, Kölsch-filled time at gamescom, we’re back in your inboxes with the most accurate games data in the biz.
Keeping things topical, let’s kick off with the gamescom games that attracted the most followers on Steam, with data between August 18 and 25.
Silksong continues to sing with a silky post-gamescom performance
Hollow Knight: Silksong gained the most followers on Steam after gamescom, which is impressive considering it already had a massive following.
Silksong pulled in another 34.4 K followers between August 18 and 25, bringing its total to 390.7 K – the most of any unreleased game on Steam. Silksong now has 5.2 million wishlists.
The original Hollow Knight has sold over 15 million copies, including 9.3 million on Steam. And fans are on the edges of the seats for Silksong, with many replaying the original on Steam ahead of the sequel’s launch next week.
To that end, Hollow Knight had almost 250 K players on Steam on Sunday (including over 38 K concurrently):
When Silksong launches next week, it’s going to BLOW UP. Want our Silksong sales numbers directly in your inbox when we have them? Hit subscribe for free below.
Two gamescom surprises take #2 and #3
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV, a long-awaited sequel, took #2 with 22.4 K followers. Reading the tea leaves, we might have seen this one coming with the August 18 launch of Dawn of War Definitive Edition, which itself has sold 232 K copies on Steam.
Dawn of War IV now has over 300 K wishlisters, mostly franchise fans. Around 60% of the wishlisters have played Dawn of War’s Soulstorm expansion.
Another surprise announcement was LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight. The title shares a lot of DNA with Rocksteady’s acclaimed Arkham trilogy and essentially gives LEGO Batman the Skywalker Saga treatment (chronicling Batman’s entire legacy and injecting that trademark LEGO and TT Games humour).
Legacy of the Dark Knight is the #3 Steam game by post-gamescom new followers, grappling in 15.2 K followers between 18 and 25 August.
On Steam, Legacy of the Dark Knight is attracting more Batman fans than LEGO ones. Of its wishlisters, 37% have played Arkham Knight, 33% Arkham Asylum, and 32% Arkham City:
As you can see above, this is slightly more than the shares who have played LEGO games on Steam. But that’s Steam. It’s worth noting that the plug-in-and-play and co-op nature of LEGO games means they resonate more with console audiences.
A new genre-mashing IP takes #4
One title that caught our attention at Opening Night Live was Valor Mortis, a first-person souls-like where you play as a supernatural soldier in a zombified rendition of the Napoleonic Wars.
Clearly, we weren’t the only ones interested in Valor Mortis, as it was the #4 gamescom game by new followers, with 9.1 K. It now has over 100 K Steam wishlisters, too.
Valor Mortis is naturally heavily combat-focused. This is a new challenge for One More Level, the team behind the two first-person mostly action/platformer Ghostrunner games.
Fully aware of the challenges in crafting first-person combat that doesn’t suck, One More Level is actively working with the souls-like community. It is even recruiting souls-like diehards for its pre-alpha playtest.
So far, the souls-like community seems into it. Our data shows that over half of Valor Mortis wishlisters on Steam have played Elden Ring, 35% played Dark Souls 3, and 29% Sekiro. Souls-like fans’ interest is clearly piqued. Meanwhile, under 20% of wishlisters have played a Ghostrunner game.
Simply put: Valor Mortis is catering to fans of the studio’s prior titles AND fans of the souls-like genre. If One More Level can live up to their game concept and work together with the souls-like community to refine the combat – and win them over – Valor Mortis’ could be a winner.
Another long-awaited strategy sequel takes #5
Finally, Paradox’s Europa Universalis V takes #5 with 7.6 K new followers. While the jury’s still out, everything we saw from the title so far seems to have raised the grand-strategy bar.
Europa Universalis IV launched 12 years ago and offered a streamlined (but still complex!) take on early modern statecraft. But EUV blows the doors wide open with a population-based simulation that tracks every person on Earth.
EUV is also launching with Chinese and Turkish localisations for the first time, which is smart: Turkey and China are top three markets for EUIV’s players and EUV’s wishlisters alike. As you might expect, the majority of EUV’s wishlisters have played EUIV.
Compared to EUIV, the war game at EUV’s core also feels sharper, with logistics, vision-blocking terrain, and discipline-based army appearances combining to create Paradox’s most ambitious warfare system yet.
Even in a preview build weighed down by performance issues, EUV already feels like a generational leap, a game willing to challenge its players as much as it challenges the limits of the genre.
Paradox has clearly learned a great deal since EUV, and it seems that fans of grand strategy will be in for a treat this November.
On that note, this year (and beyond!) is clearly shaping up to be one for the books. And the wishlist data for the rest of H2 shows it.
Nearly 200 million wishlists are still waiting on a release date, but more than 40 million already have a date to look forward to.
Expect copies sold and revenue data on all of the above when the time comes. Hit subscribe below for free to get that data right into your inbox.
Last week’s top Steam games by copies sold
Indies smashed it on Steam again last week:
As you can see:
PEAK (#1) sold almost 900 K copies last week, thanks to the final day of its discount from $7.99 to $4.99. In our previous newsletter, we predicted the viral co-op climbing game would cross 10 million sold on Tuesday, and – as announced at Opening Night Live – it just did that. We have to pat ourselves on the back sometimes, y’know?
Battlefield 2042 (#2) sold almost 500 K on Steam last week. While hype for the imminent Battlefield 6 explains some of this, the real reason for BF2042’s spike was its HUGE price drop, -95% to $2.99, its cheapest price yet on Steam. EA often does massive fire sales like this on its legacy titles to give its revenues a boost ahead of its financials. The $1.4 million in Steam revenues from Battlefield alone is nothing to sniff at. Expect more at the end of Q3.
Mage Arena (#3) continues its voice-casted-spell success story with another 183 K copies sold, bringing its total to 2.3 million sold. Not bad at all for a game made by one guy. And it’s still in early access. It’ll likely hit 3 million when it launches in early access.
R.E.P.O (#4) is one of those indie games that JUST … KEEPS … SELLING. The co-op horror phenomenon shifted 125 K copies last week and has sold 16.9 million since launching in February. That’s revenues of over $130 million. If the price drops below $5, it’s hitting 20 million sold this year.
Subnautica (#5) rounds off the list with 121 K copies sold on Steam last week, the most it’s sold in one week since early 2022 (when the price went below $10 for the first time). Last week, Subnautica hit its lowest price yet ($7), spiking sales on Steam.
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Other insights, links, and cool stuff
IGN was impressed with our PEAK numbers lining up with the official 10M announcement at gamescom, so they covered it!
We also did this interview with Eurogamer about the potential of Battlefield 6. Have a read for some spicy-ish takes.
We had an absolute BLAST at gamescom. The entire team met me (Rhys) for the first time, which was lush. We drank many Kölsch, had some long chats about strategy (and our favourite games), had some fruitful meetings, and even squeezed in time for an IRL Mario Kart sesh – like literal real-world Mario Kart:
The last word
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