The top new 2025 games by players
Here's 2025's most played new titles across Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. Plus, a breakdown of Steam’s $18B in revenue, including top indies, and other 2025 goodies.
Earlier this week, we published our annual PC and console report for our clients. We’ve now made a public version that you can access for free here.
In this newsletter, we’ll be covering the year’s most played games, the top indies, and more.
The full free report also has our estimates for DLC and demos, genre trends, co-op revenue growth, wishlist conversion data, 2026’s most anticipated games, and more.
Let’s take a peek.
Top 5 new 2025 games by players: Two EA titans sandwich three unexpected hits
It’s been an unfathomably good year for games. Here are the new ones that got the most players across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox:
Battlefield 6 took the #1, marking a massive return to form for the franchise. Our data shows Battlefield 6 has now amassed more than 26 million players (also including free-to-play REDSEC). The base game alone has sold over 20 million copies. As we covered earlier this year, this resurgence was driven by listening to the community’s wishes and returning to the franchise’s roots.
Skate’s long-awaited return was nothing short of a cultural phenomenon at launch. The free-to-play reboot reached 23M players in 2025. While skate. has lost quite a few of its players, by lowering the barrier to entry and focusing on creator bait, EA has transformed a niche sports title into a neat social platform that still pulls in 750K+ DAUs. More people played skate. than have played the new FC. I bet EA wasn’t expecting that…
R.E.P.O., one of the year’s biggest surprises, has reached 19.6 million players, showing that co-op horror games weren’t just an early 2020s fad. Its success was fuelled by a perfect storm of viral prox-chat shenanigans and a punishingly addictive gameplay loop. It managed to find the “sweet spot” between tactical depth and chaotic, emergent laughs. Download the full free report for more genre insights.
PEAK similarly continues its steady ascent, recently passing 15M players on Steam alone. While the climbing mechanics are tight, the proximity helped PEAK stand out. PEAK simulates everything from cavernous echoes to the muffled shouts of a teammate tumbling down a ravine, turning a difficult physics-based climber into an endless generator for viral, emergent comedy. There’s a pattern emerging here, eh? More on that in a bit.
EA Sports FC 26 took #5. Even as it faces more competition in the sports space (best of luck, Netflix…), EA’s licensing stranglehold and consistent annual refinements help it remain one of the most reliable revenue drivers in the console landscape (Over 92% of FC 26 players are on console). PlayStation accounts for 68% of the user base. Copies sold across PS5 and PS4 are down 15% on last year’s edition, but revenues are up thanks to stronger monetisation and pay-to-progress pushes in this year’s Ultimate Team.
Looking for DLC and demo estimates? Get them in the full report.
Indies dominated on Steam in 2025 and accounted for 25% of revenue
Our estimates show that around 20K games were released on Steam this year, but only around 300 generated over $1M. Talk about top-heavy.
Here’s a screenshot from our platform showing that Steam has already generated revenues of $17.7 billion this year:
This year’s a $17.7 billion is already up +15% over 2024’s $15.4 billion, and with 11 crucial holiday days still to go.
As our platform makes it simple to search Steam based on any theme/tag (get a free trial), we can also see that around $4.5 billion of Steam’s overall revenue – that’s over 25% – came from indie games.
Perhaps even more incredibly, over $500 million in gross revenue on Steam (3% of the year’s total) came from the top 5 new 2025 indies alone:
Schedule I ($151M)
R.E.P.O. ($147M)
PEAK ($87M)
Silksong ($75M)
Escape from Duckov ($53M)
Like, we hadn’t even heard of four of these this time last year!
One part of this surge is driven by the so-called “friendslop” phenomenon, a genre of social-first co-op games that prioritises slapstick physics and viral interactions over traditional graphical polish. The ROI is bonkers.
We’ve already covered how R.E.P.O. and PEAK have perfected a “high-stakes social” loop where punishing quotas and proximity voice chat turn human error into a comedy of errors.
Throughout the year, we’ve tracked how such games – including RV There Yet? more recently – leverage a process where the game itself acts as a social marketing engine, encouraging players to record their friends’ chaotic failures and share them on platforms like TikTok and Discord. I’ve had so many DMs with this stuff.
It effectively turns the player base into a massive, low-cost marketing department.
We’re seeing a clear trend where the most successful indies have this social glue. Even a simple climbing mechanic can become a $87M powerhouse when it’s built around the shared struggle and proximity-based banter of a friend group.
The industry used to view these chaotic co-op titles as fleeting flukes. The huge revenues generated here proves that, while these games are funny, friendslop is no joke.
We dive into co-op revenues in the full report. Get it here.
Premium games account for the majority of Steam revenues
One of the most persistent myths in the industry is that free-to-play has completely swallowed the PC market. Premium games account for 78% of Steam’s overall revenue, leaving just 22% for F2P:
While it’s true that many F2P giants have their own external launchers, the takeaway remains clear: premium is thriving.
So let’s quickly recap our estimates for some of the other premium games the first chart (the player top 15):
Expedition 33 has sold over 6.1M copies now, 57% via Steam. It has sold half-a-million more copies since its Game Awards win.
Monster Hunter Wilds is approaching 11M copies sold. While this is phenomenal, 90% of its copies sold came from its initial month title. And Wilds has largely struggled to keep momentum relative to Worlds. Capcom is working on it, though.
Split Fiction has sold over 5M copies now, with over 1/3 of the player base coming from China (get the full free report for more China data).
What a year!
PC and console gaming in 2025 was a sprawling behemoth comprised of distinct, massive sub-sectors – from prestige single-player experiences and innovative indies to hardcore shooters and low-fi co-op romps.
And 2025 has brought us absolute bangers in all of these corners. As for some of the other trends for the rest of the year, the full free report includes:
The 2025 games that resonated most in China (Steam and PlayStation)
Steam’s top DLC (by revenues) and demos (by players)
The year’s top genres and themes (Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox)
Some revenue data on co-op’s monumental rise
Wishlist insights, including conversions and post-sales curves
The most anticipated 2026 games
And finally, happy holidays from all of us at Alinea Analytics!
We’ve already got some exciting announcements in the pipeline for 2026, and we can’t wait to share more and continue bringing you the most accurate games estimates in the biz.
We’ll still be posting newsletters over the holidays, too! So look out for those, if you’re about.
If you’re not, enjoy the holidays and catch you next year!
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 games market data? We’d love to chat!]