These are the most popular PC games of the year
Valve reveals the bestsellers of 2025. While indie hits storm the platinum ranks, technically criticized AAA games achieve record sales despite defects. We analyze the winners, losers and hardware rumors for the coming year.
Valve breaks sales records with annual charts
For the platform operator Valve, the year 2025 marked a historic financial peak. With an impressive total turnover of 17.7 billion dollars (around 15 billion euros), the Bellevue-based company is consolidating its supremacy in digital PC sales. Just in time for the turn of the year, the group traditionally provides an insight into the most successful products of the past twelve months.
What is important for classification is that these lists are based on gross sales. This includes not only the pure purchase price, but also all income from additional content (DLCs) and in-game transactions. Within the precious metal categories – bronze, silver, gold and platinum – the sorting is done purely randomly so as not to reveal any of the partners’ exact business data. As expected, multiplayer titles dominate in the coveted platinum category, which includes the twelve highest-grossing titles.
The tactical extraction shooter Arc Raiders, the military shooter Battlefield 6 and the complex survival MMO Dune: Awakening were able to secure top spots. But to the delight of many fans of classic game concepts, pure single-player experiences also made it into the top 12. The medieval role-playing game Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and the long-awaited Metroidvania Hollow Knight: Silksong impressively prove that narrative games without live service elements still have enormous sales potential on the platform.
Technical defects hardly slow down sales
A detailed analysis of the official by Steam The data provided reveals a remarkable discrepancy between technical quality and willingness to buy. How Kotaku Reportedly, Monster Hunter Wilds is one of the most commercially successful titles of the year. This is surprising since the action role-playing game was classified by technology experts as one of the weakest PC ports of 2025 due to massive performance problems. Apparently the players were not deterred by stuttering and graphical errors. A similar picture emerges with Borderlands 4 and Civilization 7, which also achieved platinum status despite mixed user reviews. In direct contrast to this is the critics’ favorite Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Although the game was showered with prizes at the Game Awards, the sales generated on Valve’s platform were only enough for the gold category (places 13 to 24). This underlines that media recognition and high ratings do not necessarily correlate with the highest income. Instead, smaller productions like Schedule 1 and the co-op hit REPO were able to overtake many large productions. These titles benefited massively from the attention of streamers and content creators, which surprisingly secured them a place in the platinum segment.
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