Steam's most played games this year include only two 2025 releases

Another year is done and dusted, and for many it can be a fun time to look back at what you played on the games you spent the most time with (unless you're an Xbox fan). It might also be interesting to see exactly which games dominated our collective free time in 2025, and to do that, Steam has once again offered an interesting list of the most played titles in 2025.

Unsurprisingly, it's full of big hitters like Counter Strike and Marvel Rivals, and a host of other multiplayer games that dominate your life as you go through these phases. One of the more interesting aspects of this list, however, is that only two of the games out of the 12 there were actually released in 2025.

Steam's most played games this year include only two 2025 releases

We know that people are spending less on new games at the moment, which became quite evident after Steam Replay revealed that only 14 percent of total game time across Steam in 2025 was spent on games that launched this year. Of the 12 most played games this year, Peak and Repo are the only representation of the year, with some Arc Raiders, Hollow Knight: Silksong or Monster Hunter Wilds in sight. In fact, there are more games on the list that are over a decade old.

Peak, REPO and Schedule 1 characters against a pink and black background.

Family

Almost half of this year's top-performing Steam games have come from Double-A or Indie Studios

The times are changing.

Stardew Valley, Terraria and even Left 4 Dead 2 were all played more than the vast majority of 2025's offerings, which makes sense given how popular they've been for so long. It's possible that games like Arc Raiders might have appeared if they had launched earlier in the year, what with missing the advantage of not having a full 12 months.

Then again, even when you expand the list of the year's most played titles to 24, you still only get the likes of Schedule 1, Battlefield 6, and Call of Duty, two of which you'd expect to be on the list every year they're released. In fact, Call of Duty was in the top 12 in both 2024 and 2023, bolstering claims that Black Ops 6 has been extremely disappointing in terms of players this year.

Of all the games that could have represented 2025, it's interesting to see so-called “friendslop” games like Peak and Repo above everything else, which could point to where the industry is headed. People will either want their cheap and fun experiences to play with their friends, or they'll stick with the game they've always played, and it will be interesting to see how the industry adapts to that.