How The Last Caretaker journeyed to >100k Early Access sales in a month
Also: a look at November's most-streamed games, and just too much news.
[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.]
Well, we’re back - did you miss us? The U.S. Thanksgiving period was good, and there was no ‘breaking news’. But we accumulated a near-fatal amount of updates, and there’s only three weeks left til the Xmas break. So let’s get on with it…
But before we start, we love ARC Raiders’ patch for players sneaking inside locked rooms by cheating collision detection. Instead of fixing the actual collision (hard!), “locked rooms now turn you into a fireball if you glitch inside.” Is.. it getting hot in here?
[NEED PC/CONSOLE INSIGHT? Companies, get much more ‘Steam deep dive’ & console data SaaS access org-wide via GameDiscoverCo Pro, as 80+ have. And signing up to GDCo Plus gets (like Pro!) the rest of this newsletter and Discord access, plus basic data & more. ]
Game discovery news: billions of Steam hours…
OK, let’s get cracking, and we’ll start with a bonus graph (above) from some work we did for a prospective GDCo Pro client:
We got asked about in-game Steam player hours from 2024-2025. GDCo estimates it up from ~4.7 billion (Jan. 2024) to ~5.4 billion (Oct. 2025), a 17% increase. China is about 20% of the hours. And if estimating Steam MAU at 180m-200m, that’s an average of 27 hours played per month. Fascinating.
There’s two weeks worth of ‘trending unreleased Steam games’ to discuss! In Week 1, the Dark Messiah-y Fatekeeper and extraction shooter PUBG: Black Budget exceled. And in Week 2, it’s Digital Extremes’ large-scale Soulframe (new on Steam) and My Summer Car sequel My Winter Car that make big new entries.
All of Jonas Tyroller’s Game Dev Pod/Videocast episodes are great - but his interview with Slots & Daggers & Summerhouse dev Friedemann Allmenröder is particularly good. Why? It goes deep into the creativity process for making hit games - he thinks ‘remixing’ is key - “you can only combine things in your mind.”
Microlinks, Pt.1: More players in the UK, US and Japan still prefer single-player games to multiplayer, survey finds; ex-Sony exec Shawn Layden on console differentation - ‘‘‘only dogs can hear it.’.. it’s beyond human comprehension for most users”; creative platform s&box is now open-source (but not the Source 2 bit, which Valve owns - just the high level systems.)
After GamesRadar & others picked up our ‘games getting cheaper on Steam’ research, some interesting player comments on how they see pricing. We dug this ResetEra thread for saner/veteran players, and this Reddit r/gaming thread for a mix of kneejerk Internet animosity and insight (tho nobody read the article!)
Xbox’s Phil Spencer has been getting ‘LinkedIn excited’ about cloud expansion on Game Pass: "Game Pass cloud hours are up 45% compared to this time last year, and console players are streaming 45% more on console and 24% more on other devices.” (From where to where is still an open question, of course…)
Did you know Steam is regularly acting on Russian government demands to remove games they consider unauthorized? Us neither, until this LGBTQ-tagged solitaire game got removed. (If you want to see other removed titles, SteamDB has the full list - we found a lot of sexy games & at least one Ukrainian drone sim.)
Microlinks, Pt.2: PlayStation Plus monthly games for Dec. adds 5 games, inc. Lego Horizon Adventures and Killing Floor 3; Nintendo’s dev acquisition push reaches Splatoon 3 co-dev Bandai Namco Singapore; Xbox Game Pass’ first December titles include Mortal Kombat 1, Dome Keeper, Death Howl & more.
Another podcast appearance for Simon? Why yes, I turned up alongside PC Gamer’s Morgan Park on The Ringer’s Button Mash podcast talking about game discovery for the viral Steam hits of 2025, from Peak to Megabonk. (Circana’s Mat Piscatella enjoyed it, so why not you?)
Epic’s Tim Sweeney has been weighing in on Steam’s public AI disclosure: “It makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production”, also quipping: “Why stop at AI use? We could have mandatory disclosures for what shampoo brand the developer uses.” (As a bald man, I’m just as God made me, Sir.)
Microlinks Pt. 3: Discord now lets you buy and gift video game skins on-platform, starting with Marvel Rivals; The Finals is dropping PlayStation 4 support in 2026 to focus on current-gen platforms; the ROG Xbox Ally handheld is getting per-game ‘default game profiles’ to improve frame rate & power consumption.
Inside The Last Caretaker’s >100k sales in a month
In this crazy hectic market, GameDiscoverCo keeps an eye on new Steam games retaining a high % of concurrent users - a rarity. Which is why we’ve been monitoring Channel37’s “thoughtful take on the survival-crafting genre” The Last Caretaker ($35), which launched on Nov. 6th, maxed at 10k CCU, and is still at 5k CCU.
For a title that’s had very little ‘trad press’ at launch, and an original IP which is $35 at Early Access launch, the game is really doing well. And so we reached out to co-founder of the Supercell-funded Finnish studio, Antti Ilvessuo, who confirmed that the game has sold >120,000 copies in Early Access in just under a month.
Antti and co-founders (Vesa Halonen, Miika Aulio and Sami Saarinen, some of whom were OGs at Trials creator RedLynx) also provided us with other first-party data:
The game has a lower refund rate than expected at 5.6%: this is notable because it definitely shipped into EA with bugs, but players are willing to stick with it.
Median playtime is 15 hrs 8 mins, average is 25 hrs 6 mins: as Antti says: “We’ve got a player base that really is exploring and enjoying the game.” And 25,000 players have played 40 hours or more - in just a handful of weeks.
The title actually exceeded internal expectations: “Projections were cautious, but the game outperformed [our estimates] of day one, day seven and day 30.” (This is depressingly rare nowadays.)
Before we get on to why, here’s another couple of actual data points we treasure - starting with lifetime sales by country, headed by the U.S. (a hefty 36.4%), followed by Germany (a big overperform - 18.6%, vs. a 7% median for survival crafters, per us!), then UK (7.4%), France (4.5%), and Canada (4.0%):
And one particularly cool thing? Since The Last Caretaker’s team gave us a breakdown of LTD sales per country and current (post-launch) wishlists per country, we can see which countries are under-represented or over-represented in sales:
We’re never done this before, and there’s several caveats. But we def. see wishlists from Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Turkey majorly under-represented in actual sales. And then sales majorly overindexed vs. wishlists in Germany and Austria, presumably due to post-launch virality in those countries. (Those under-converting countries may well be near-universal - time to check your wishlists?)
Still, we can see the game is connecting well, off Steam and on. For example, GDCo Pro data says that 6,800 other games’ Steam ‘More Like This’ sections link to The Last Caretaker right now, ranking it comfortably in the Top 100 - that’s good algo juice!
So: in The Last Caretaker, you’re a lonely robot who discovers they need to do something to help humanity. (We’re keeping this a little vague, since it’s semi-spoiler-y.) But we chatted to Channel37’s Antti about why the idea & gameplay are resonating:
The team is lean and focused on a particular ‘flavor’ of survival game: since the team of four first started creating TLC 4 years ago (they’re now up to 8 + contractors), they focused on “building a game where you explore a vast ocean with a vessel, moving between smaller handcrafted locations that all have their own purpose.”
Though it takes ideas from survival games, it’s oriented differently: Antti notes that a “bigger influence” than the survival genre was “the feeling of a world that has been lived in, built for a purpose, and then left behind, like Lost.. Lord of the Rings, or even WALL·E - where the environment tells its own story without anyone saying a word.”
The ‘lonely robot’ game strives for a deeper humanity (robot-ity?): rather than an “endless grind”, Antti says “we wanted something that actually carries meaning behind the systems. People respond to purpose. If you give them a reason to care about something emotional, something human, they connect to it in a completely different way.”
So while the execution - in terms of exploring, collecting, harvesting, and upgrading - is very well-done, there’s also more than a little… soul in the game? And that combo is what seems to be floating it, and allowing Early Access to be ‘early’ but rewarding. Here’s GDCo Pro’s Steam player review analytics for the game so far:
So it’s interesting - there’s definitely some Early Access roughness, especially around performance. But the game has 85% Positive player reviews and the art & concept have proved very influencer-friendly. So: we think the EA launch feature/bug balance - and the giant, well-signposted dev roadmap aiding sales - is right.
And as Antti notes: “On YouTube, people are not just playing the game; their views have gone up tenfold. That tells us the game isn’t just fun to play, it’s fun to watch, which is something we always quietly hoped for.” (In other words, make a game that’s compelling for viewers, and streamers will play you more - it’s the dream.)
OK, so good, well-crafted game with an influencer hook does well, ‘more news at 10’, etc. Heh, seriously - we’re not sure where The Last Caretaker can get to. But we wouldn’t be surprised to see it hit >500k sales eventually - even more if it adds co-op. (Which we understand isn’t immediately planned, but isn’t out of the question.)
One final Q: so many new PC hits are made by novices nowadays - it’s the law of averages. So does having dev experience even… matter? The Channel37 team has >100 years experience between them - tho some in areas like bike-stuntin’, not this genre.
We asked, and in turn, Antti answered: “Getting that ‘right’ feeling isn’t genre-specific. It’s craftsmanship. And for me, it took 26 years to understand what ‘right’ actually is. Expertise doesn’t replace creativity, but it definitely helps you see the path faster.” In other words - maybe knowing how to make games helps you make better games. (We def. hope so.)
Most-viewed games of Nov: ARC Raiders do gud!
Finally, we’ll be doing our ‘top new PC/console games of November’ countdown at GDCo on Friday. But before that, livestream analytics platform Stream Hatchet got us the Top 100 most-streamed games for Nov, analyzing the big (non-China) game video streaming platforms like Twitch & friends.
Here’s the full list of the Top 100 (Google Drive link) with GDCo annotations. And Stream Hatchet’s Mark Rowland once again helps us round up the big happenings:
ARC Raiders really went places after its late October launch: extraction shooter ARC Raiders managed to hit the #2 spot with 123m hours watched, and pushed GTA V out of the Top 2 spots for the first time since Nov. 2023 (two whole years!)
Escape From Tarkov’s 1.0/Steam release also catapulted it up: rival extractrion shooter Escape from Tarkov 1.0-ed on November 15th, and impressively hit #6, with 85m hours watched. (Compare that to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, which premiered at about the same time and hit #13 with 29m hours watched - uhoh.)
New entries were headed by Wuxia RPG standout Where Winds Meet: given this chart is non-China, Where Winds Meet did great (#30, 13.7m hours), as did Anno 117: Pax Romana (#48, 5.6m hours), Switch 2 exclusive Kirby Air Riders (#52, 4.6m hours), and Europa Universalis V (#60, 4.2m hours).
Also notable? Brutal survival-er Rust managed to hit #14 with 29m hours watched (up 2.9x), thanks to a server wipe and a successful Kick Drops event (the first of its kind.) And late October narrative hit Dispatch picked up a lot of momentum in November, hitting #34 and 10.4m hours watched (up 7.5x.) Toodles!
[We’re GameDiscoverCo, an analysis firm based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your PC or console game? We run the newsletter you’re reading, and provide real-time data services for publishers, funds, and other smart game industry folks.]