Alinea Analytics: 2025 Year in Review (PC & Console)
Indie generated 25% of Steam's revenue this year; games from Sweden reached 20% of market share; and more interesting insights inside.
The data covers the period from January 1 to November 20, 2025. The analysis includes Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, Microsoft PC, as well as Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus subscribers. The rankings include only new games released during the 2025 calendar year.
Most successful games of 2025
Battlefield 6 was the most successful release by player count (excluding the free-to-play Redsec). 23.8 million players across all platforms purchased the game.
Skate ranked second with 21.6 million players. However, it is a free-to-play title, hard to compare it with BF6's success.
Third and fourth place by player count went to two indie hits: R.E.P.O. with 19.2 million players and Peak with 14.5 million.
Around 20,000 projects are expected to be released on Steam in 2025. Just over 300 of them will generate more than $1 million in gross revenue.
Indie games will account for 25%+ of total Steam revenue by the end of 2025.
Alinea Analytics highlights examples of games with extremely high ROI. For instance, RV There Yet? was developed in roughly three months. PEAK took slightly longer, and the project itself originated from a four-week game jam (the slide contains a minor inaccuracy, as development lasted longer than four weeks).
RimWorld Odyssey is the most successful DLC on Steam in 2025. The expansion earned more than $2 million on its first day and has already generated over $10 million in total revenue. Around 10% of the game’s owners purchased it. The largest markets for the DLC are the US and China.
Alinea Analytics emphasizes the importance of the Chinese audience for PC and console success. According to the service, China is the largest market on Steam and the fifth-largest for PlayStation.
Escape From Duckov (64% of its audience from China), Split Fiction (44%), and Monster Hunter: Wilds (26%) are the biggest Steam hits in China. On PlayStation, the leaders are Split Fiction (26% of the audience from China), Monster Hunter Wilds (17%), and Death Stranding 2: On The Beach (24%).
Mecha Break was the most popular demo of 2025. More than 2 million players tried it, and peak CCU exceeded 300,000.
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Most successful genres of 2025
The data covers the period from January 1, 2025, to December 6, 2025.
Action, adventure, and RPG are the top three genres by total player count among new releases. There are exceptions: sports games rank second in popularity on consoles, while strategy games perform better on Steam.
Looking at Steam tags, realistic games showed the strongest revenue growth (with a major contribution from Battlefield 6), followed by action and FPS. Cooperative games (with the relevant tag) showed the highest average revenue in 2025.
Eleven out of the top 20 games of 2025 include cooperative gameplay.
Market overview
Premium games account for 78% of total Steam revenue in 2025. The chart shows that the share of free-to-play projects on the platform has not exceeded 20% over the past 10 years.
I’m not sure how accurate Alinea Analytics’ estimate of F2P revenue is. The service is definitely missing some of the most successful F2P hits of the last few years, like Fortnite, Genshin Impact, and so on.
Sweden is the global leader in Steam revenue in 2025. Games from Sweden generated 20% of all gross Steam revenue. Titles developed in Stockholm alone account for 16% of total Steam gross revenue. R.E.P.O. alone represents 3% of all games sold on Steam in 2025.
There are three types of projects that managed to enter the top 100 by revenue without a large number of wishlists: annual franchises like EA FC, viral hits such as R.E.P.O., and “shadow launches” where a game releases on the same day it is announced (Peak, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion).
All other projects that made it into the top 100 by revenue in 2025 were at least in the top 200 most-wishlisted games.
In 2025, entering the top 200 most anticipated projects required at least 170k to 200k wishlists. In addition, Alinea Analytics estimates that wishlist-to-sales conversion is declining.
Ultimately, sales depend on game quality and user ratings. The chart clearly shows how differently projects with similar preorder numbers and audience expectations can perform.
Interestingly, 41% of games in the top 100 were not made using Unity or Unreal Engine. On PlayStation, for example, 73% of the top 100 projects were built on other engines. On Steam, Unity performs particularly well, largely due to its popularity among indie developers.
The most wishlisted titles with releases in 2026 are StarRupture (January), Resident Evil: Requiem (February), and Mouse (March). Among May releases, Paralives leads.