[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
Hey all - as we all take stock of the 7,000+ demos (!) in Steam Next Fest, we did a LinkedIn analysis discussing the AI disclosure percentage: 2,498 out of the 7,217 demos in total (34.6%.) That’s up from 21.2% of games in Feb's Next Fest and 26.5% in June's. (We’ll have larger-picture analysis this coming Tuesday, as we mentioned.)
After picking 5 random AI disclosures, they cluster around things like store page icons & placeholder localization. (We wouldn’t call these 100% ‘AI first’ games.) But as we add: “First, AI code helper use doesn't have to be disclosed.. and second, people may deliberately only disclose smaller things.” So it’s confusing: Schrodinger’s slop?
Before we start, maybe some nostalgic photos at this trying time? Great: the Video Game History Foundation just launched the Colin Williamson photography collection, “from a game journalist who was embedded in Japan from 1999 through the mid-2000s”, including TGS, Space World, and Akihabara pics from a golden age.
[NEED THE BEST DATA? You can get a free demo of our GameDiscoverCo Pro company-wide ‘Steam deep dive’ & console data, inc. MCP server, by reaching out today - >110 orgs have it. Or, signing up to GDCo Basic gets extra newsletter and Discord access, plus more.]
Game disco news: most-played games of 2026…
Let’s finish the week with another chunk of game platform & discovery news:
We pulled an updated list of biggest median playtime Steam games in 2026 with >100k players from GDCo Pro & besides desktop idlers taking the top spots, Slay The Spire 2 is still a monster (52 hours, ~8m players!), w/newer entries including the latest NBA 2K & EA Sports FCs, plus Forza 6 and (impressively!) Wardogs.
A new Fortune report on Xbox, filtered via VGC, includes plans for a “next-generation handheld device” by holiday 2027 and console by 2028, says: “As it stands, the price of the Helix console has internally been projected to cost consumers between $1,200 and $1,800… unless Microsoft decides to subsidize the cost.” That’s… non-cheap.
Max Power Gaming took a look at the Roblox charts for September, and it’s that egg-stealin’ game again: “After finishing second behind Murder Mystery 2 in August, Steal an Egg surged to an average of 1.4 million concurrent players, more than three times the audience of its nearest challenger, Brookhaven.”
The folks at super-popular YouTube analysis channel Bellular News took on the Steam Daily/Weekend Sale redesign, and this very missive is described as “an excellent newsletter”, as they agreed with us that removing ‘friction’ over how well devs know Valve with algorithms could actually work - if the algorithms gel.
Xbox things: Xbox Insiders get to try ‘a la carte’ Xbox cloud playtime, which is 10 hrs for $4, 25 for $8, and 50 for $12; new Game Pass titles include Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, The Séance of Blake Manor & more; the new Xbox Labs folks have been showing off (emulated?) oldskool Xbox bootup sequences on X.
A Steam change spotted by our GDCo Basic/Pro Discord crew: you now have to tag at least 5 screenshots with ‘gameplay’ before launching your Steam page, and at least one video, too. (Steam always had a similar rule, and would reject if not, but didn’t set up their UI to explicitly have you tag/agree before submitting.)
The consulting firm Vivrato have been surveying game execs about their firms’ usage of AI, noting: “94% use AI in at least one of nine production stages, but 52% rate how deeply it is built into their full production pipeline at three or lower out of 10.” (This ‘wider but shallow’ integration makes sense - there’s some posturing going on.)
GameDiscoverCo took a quick look at most-watched unreleased games on Twitch in the last 7 days, and it's striking to see the relative lack of Steam Next Fest titles (so far!) Valve's perpetually in-beta 6 vs. 6 MOBA/shooter Deadlock is #1, and alt-history Napoleonic extraction RPG Hunger (watch this game!) is coming in hot at #2. (‘Next Fest x Twitch’ winners? ArcheAge Chronicles, Find The Needle, Loftia…)
Xbox things, Pt. 2: AMD’s FSR 4.1 for image sharpening - similar to Sony’s QSSR - is due on Xbox Series X & S shortly; Microsoft is reportedly sending e-mails to lapsed Xbox console users to sell their consoles to Best Buy; the IGN x ID@Xbox streaming showcase included a co-op hole digging game & Arctic Eggs → Xbox.
Well, that PHP vulnerability was a bit of a fire drill, huh? Among a host of websites, PC game platforms were seemingly taken down to patch, with a Steam downtime on Wednesday likely (?) linked to a fix, and GOG taken down for around four hours to remediate. Fun.
Microlinks: Nvidia’s DLSS AI detail tech is coming to Hogwarts Legacy & Where Winds Meet; ; Google is adding a Game Finder discovery mechanism to Google Play; top ‘trad media’ mentions for the week inc. GTA VI, CoD: Modern Warfare 4, and Zelda: Ocarina Of Time (re: the remake.)
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How Invokyr sold ~250k copies w/Jumanji cool?
It’s been a busy October for new Steam/console releases. But when looking for a game to highlight, we looked at ‘Oct. releases with the highest Steam concurrents’. And lo and behold, among much bigger titles like Star Wars Galactic Racer, we spotted Ludogram’s “co-op survival horror game about a cursed board game” Invokyr in the top 10.
This $13 (launch discounted to $9.74) title launched on Oct. 8th, and we’re estimating it at ~250,000 copies sold, perhaps a ~$2m gross, and topped out at ~10,000 Steam concurrents. Its CCU chart is impressively scaled/stable - and atypically spiky, partly due to China (co-published via Shochiku) being ~48% of players, according to the devs:
So while this may not yet be a $25m-grossing smash just due to its lower cost of entry, we’d def. expect it to hit $5-$10m on Steam over time. And in today’s crowded market, that’s a great result. So we talked to Ludogram’s Edouard Gaudel (CEO/creative director) and César Grislain (game director) - here’s some of our takeaway on why:
The game mashes up horror, randomness, and cursed board games so well: go look at the RDC Gaming crew playing Invokyr ~100% incoherently - tell us it’s not fun to watch? Ludogram tells us they started with the idea of a RPG with an interfering GM, before getting inspired by actual ‘90s horror TV board game Nightmare/Atmosfear. (And later removing the VHS/TV element altogether…)
The ‘creepy Jumanji’ board game hook is incredibly robust: it can’t be overstated how much a natural YouTuber & player comp to another popular thing can help your virality. And in this case, ‘it’s like Jumanji - the original movie’ 100% works. A lot of Steam player reviews mention it too, even tho it’s not in the marketing.
There’s more roguelite in here than many similar titles: having a central hub board game & a) rolling to advance levels & get random quests/bad guys, and b) finding in-level dice with weird good/bad effects - differentiates it from other co-op. Ludogram’s other teams working on Monsters Are Coming & Ascenders both use roguelite mechanics, so they “are often part of our broader design culture.”
Invokyr didn’t have a particular large dev team, btw, but also not a tiny one, spanning between 6 and 12 devs during ~two years of development. What they’ve managed to pull off has good fidelity at ‘above-tiny dev’ levels. (Side note: surely somebody will be tempted to license a movie adaptation of this concept?)
We also wanted to talk about the fact that Invokyr’s gameplay feels really well-polished at launch. Well - it is, and that’s because Ludogram did a ton(ne) of iteration. According to what Edouard & César told us re: the playtest process:
“Playtests & demos were a really important part of the creation process for Invokyr. The first playtest was in September 2025. Feedback was good, but we had issues with players not focusing on the board aspect of the game. We did 2nd & 3rd [smaller] playtests in February and April 2026, then a demo released in May, updated in July, a closed beta in September 2026.”
Maybe it’s getting a little tiring for some of you to see co-op and horror games take off yet again. But look - with Phasmophobia at 25 million copies sold as of July 2025 (we have 53% of Invokyr players as also owning Phasmophobia), there’s plenty of juice still out there for this type of title. (Maybe proficient takes on co-op horror are under-served?)
And proficiency is key - look at GDCo Pro Steam player review data for Invokyr. It’s pretty rare to see almost no red/negative bars in our review sentiment topics:
Some final notes: a) the Invokyr demo topped out at ~2,000 CCU, so there was some indication the full game was going to do well b) we estimate (a v.good!) 3 hours and 48 minutes median playtime so far, and we’d expect that to stretch up. c) Twitch activity is also jumpin’ - #67 from the 28,800 games we tracked in the last 7 days.
This week on Steam: CoD, FF Resonance, more…
