Valve has officially unveiled Steam’s best-selling and most played games of the year in its Best of 2020 page. In a year when a global pandemic spurred interest in gaming like never before, the following titles made it to the digital game storefront’s top 12 (Platinum tier), based on gross revenue:
- Among Us
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Destiny 2
- Dota 2
- Doom Eternal
- Fall Guys
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Monster Hunter World
- Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds
- Rainbow Six: Siege
- Red Dead Redemption II
It’s important to note that the above list is arranged alphabetically and is not intended to imply any sort of ranking. Valve didn’t reveal any actual sales figures to hint at the actual sales rankings.
It’s also worth noting that three of the 12 best-selling games are actually free to play, speaking volumes about the popularity of CS:GO, Dota 2, and Destiny 2, and their ability for their players to truly invest in their in-game experiences.
Dota 2 and CS:GO are also noteworthy as perennial favorites, considering these games are far from brand new. These games, along with GTA V, have made it to the Platinum tier in all five years that Steam has made these year-end lists, starting with the inaugural one in 2016.
Steam’s Best of 2020 list also includes five other categories, namely, New Releases, Most Played, Early Access Grads, Best of VR, and Controller Games.
Aside from the revenue rankings, the Most Played category is most indicative of a game’s fame and influence throughout the year. And in this list, titles like Dota 2, CS: GO, Among Us, PUBG, Destiny 2, Monster Hunter World, and GTA V reassert their dominance by racking up more than 200,000 peak concurrent players at some point throughout 2020.
Valve noted “how much higher the peak concurrent numbers [for 2020] were compared to 2019,” in its Best of 2020 blog. There’s no doubt that people spending more time indoors for a good chunk of the year had a lot to do with this remarkable growth.
“Steam saw 12 titles reach more than 100,000 peak concurrent players in all of 2019,” Valve said. “That number more than doubled in 2020, with 26 games going above 100,000 players. This increase happened across the board, so we’ve doubled the size of each bucket for 2020.”
Among the top new releases of the year are Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout — which became a quick favorite during the earlier months of the lockdown — and the controversial Cyberpunk 2077.
And in case you’re wondering (or have forgotten), Among Us — 2020’s viral multiplayer sensation — didn’t make the cut among the new releases because it originally came out in 2018. This goes to show that a game’s popularity and success doesn’t always have to come as soon as it releases — although let’s hope it doesn’t take any more catastrophic global circumstances for the next great game to emerge.
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