[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.]
As we start rounding the corner towards what many people will call the Grand Theft Auto VI holidays (ho ho?), GameDiscoverCo is back. And our lead story breaks down a busy month for new game releases across PC and console - which did the best overall?
Before we start, weird story: “Popular [mobile] RPG-dating sim Love and Deepspace issued a warning to players after announcing some fictional cocktails with potentially disastrous real-world consequences if actually consumed.” (The cocktails - theoretically in-game recipes only - included the poisonous & psychoactive datura flower, woops.)
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Game discovery news: friend scamming is… hot?
Let’s get going, with some of the top discovery & platform news of the week so far:
Checking GameDiscoverCo Pro's estimates of 'trending' unreleased Steam games by 'new wishlists in the last 7 days', Sept 28th - Oct 5th, Scam With Your Friends (job sim where you voice-chat with AI NPCs to defraud ‘em) is up to #1, with wolf-raisin’ sim Family Time at #2 and automation-er Find The Needle at #3.
New or trending? Uh, Purble Place 3D (#4) is an (unofficial?) follow-up to some v. nostalgic bundled Windows puzzle games, and LitGirls: Bookbound Dungeons (#7) is a dungeon crawler JRPG starring classic literary heroines. (Less new? Valve's own Deadlock is trending at #12, thanks to a major new beta update.)
Video game streaming showcase heads up: the next Triple-I Initiative showcase - the second one this year - is turning up on October 8th, and the upcoming Galaxies Showcase is hitting on October 15th. (Recap.games keeps a public schedule of upcoming attractions…)
We’ve talked about video games getting more randomized rewards & divergent ‘runs’. And while games don’t come up in this NYT piece about ‘how everything became gambling’, the article underscores the fact that the attention economy is just getting ‘grabbier’. And games have to compete with gambling for eyeballs.
Steam’s upcoming Next Fest (starting Oct. 19th) has its dev-only preview live. And reports say there’s a new interactive genre picker (using 2x ‘lead categories’ the dev picks) to help players choose, early on. (Also: currently >8,000 demos (!) queued for the fest - though that number will come down, as some games drop out late…)
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos commented on their video game strategy at Bloomberg’s Screentime event, saying: “We [are] much more interested in what you could do on the TV using your phone as a remote. And remember, in a kind of post-console world, there’s going to be all kinds of opportunities for gaming on the television.”
More evidence Minecraft’s getting sharpened platform power? Tubefilter spotted a job ad which has a successful applicant “defending against competing platforms (Roblox, Fortnite/UEFN, Unity, Fab) through better developer experience, tooling, and enablement at portfolio scale.” (That doesn’t sound like cozy oldskool Mojang.)
‘Games as platform’ news: the free ‘remastered’ upgrade for CDPR’s The Witcher 3 comes with cross-platform modding support, with a number of interesting mods already available across PC & console - here’s a good overview on how it works now. (Easier to use UGC should really help long tail & community…)
Two follow-ups from our S&box piece: we got reminded Facepunch is also OK with standalone Steam apps of S&box games, as long as Valve agrees & the player models get replaced. (Though none launched yet.) And the sausage-y characters got less sausage-y - yes, they have necks now! (This is news? Plz nod.)
Microlinks: a closer look at the ‘local streaming’-optimized Pyrowave code Steam’s adding as a remote stream option; even in the ‘fast follow’-friendly mobile space, Oakever Games may be going too far; sitdown & redemption arcade games are getting some of the 'higher supply’ issues that PC/console games also have, huh?
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Sept 2026’s top new PC/console games, revealed..
We return, of course, to GameDiscoverCo’s top new Steam (& console) games of Sept. 2026, powered by our Pro data. Here’s Aug, July, June, May, April, March, Feb and Jan, if you missed ‘em. As for Sept’s top new Steam games by units, here’s what we see:
Wardogs is the breakout of month & it’s not even close: we have the ambitious 100 player tactical FPS - now independent, but with significant Tencent funding in its past - at ~3.5m Steam units by the end of Sept. (And it’s still pulling ~200k CCU daily, down from a ~420k high, so no major retention issues - v.impressive.)
Multiplatform AAA winners crowded the Top 5: in addition to perennial console megahit EA Sports FC 27 (#5, ~420k Steam units), the well-received new Onimusha game (#3, 730k Steam units, nearly 2m units multiplatform) & AA+ ($40m dev costs?) Blood Of Dawnwalker (#4, 650k Steam units >1m multiplatform) did nicely.
Indie breakouts of the month? Bombanana!, Graveyard Keeper 2, Dressmaker: the chaotic co-op bomb disposal-er Bombanana! topped 1m Steam units at #2, while well-crafted sequel Graveyard Keeper 2 did >400k (#6) and late-month job sim Dressmaker - which we’ll profile on Friday - made it past 300k, fast.
In a pretty busy month for AAA-adjacent releases, we’re also highlighting Control Resonant (#8), which we have at >350k units by end of month, despite a later Sept 24th release. It’s scaling nicely on PC - and decently on console too (>200k between PlayStation/Xbox), though the IP may lack global ‘casual’ reach like some other brands.
Checking the Top 10 new paid Steam releases by $ for August (not inc. off-Steam key sales), it’s, well, a lot of the games we talked about already! So we have Wardogs at ~$110m gross, and Dawnwalker and Onimusha at ~$30m, followed by NBA 2K27 (which just missed the Top 10 by units) and EA Sports FC 27.
Other titles also in the Top 10: asymmetrical horror standout Halloween: The Game - which sold super-well on PlayStation, as we’ll see below - and very late-month arrivals Minecraft Dungeons II & Transport Fever 3*. (*Launching on the 28th: fine in real life, tamps down appearances on ‘calendar month’ charts, haha.)
Checking on all-game Steam revenue for August, we actually have Wardogs pipping Valve’s Counter-Strike 2 to #1 at ~$100-$110m each - though it’s probably close either way. The regular F2P stalwarts - Apex Legends and PUBG: Battlegrounds - are next up, followed by this month’s $60-$70 hits that we already discussed.
Two interesting results further down the chart, though? Total War: Warhammer III hit #8 with ~$25m thanks to the giant Lord Of The End Times expansion - actually playable without owning the base game, tho we suspect most do. And a giant free update for shooter Bodycam added >$20m. (We have it at ~$70m LTD Steam gross.)
As always, we include the all-game #11 to #30 on Steam (above), since there’s always things to gawk at. We spotted new gacha F2P creature collector Aniimo (~$15m, would have been #6 in the ‘new game’ charts if we included F2P!) and friendslop hit How To Fish, which grossed another $6.5m & is now at >8.5m units and >$38m LTD.
Examining GDCo’s estimates of (non-sub!) PlayStation and Xbox units for new games in Sept, it’s a super busy PlayStation release month, headed by sports evergreens. That’s EA Sports FC 27, which we have over 6m units for the month, and NBA 2K27, which topped 4m. (We have these titles at an extra ~2m each on Xbox, btw.)
Much-awaited PlayStation exclusive Marvel’s Wolverine hit #3 in our charts with ~2m units sold so far (and still scaling.) And Halloween: The Game did an impressive ~1m, edging ahead of Onimusha. (For the record, the next three notable debuts by unit were Blood Of Dawnwalker (~400k), Silent Hill: Townfall (~200k), and Control Resonant (~175k.))
We already covered the top Xbox games, since basketball & soccer are big for the U.S. and UK-heavy ‘casual’ player base of consoles. Halloween also did ~500k, and hockey’s #4. (Just imagine the hockey tie-ins if it had been Illfonic’s last game, Friday 13th?)
Finally, GDCo’s Switch eShop #s (based on U.S. and UK eShop charts): Nintendo’s own Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave did >500k units on eShop and lots more physical. Also hot: indie hit Meccha Chameleon (>200k), co-op exclusive Orbitals (>100k copies, more physical), while EA Sports FC 27, Diablo IV & Minecraft Dungeons II all charted.
And we’re skipping the ‘all games’ charts for GDCo Pro’s analysis of Twitch most-viewed for September 2026, but here’s the Top 20 hours viewed for new games:
Wardogs? Just an outright killer - 42m hours watched in the month is outrageous, and even beat out EA Sports FC 27. But Blood Of Dawnwalker (#3, 10.3m), Halloween (#5, 8m), Onimusha (#6, ~8m), and Aniimo (#7, 6.8m) are also big streaming hits, in a flat-out busy month, as games crowded in - partly to get ahead of GTA VI, we presume.
GameDisco Show: a bad name hurts a good game?
We keep keepin’ on, so we have the latest The GameDiscover Show, ft. myself (Simon) and Post Games’ Chris Plante talking game discovery trends - sub to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify & elsewhere (audio), with a video version on YouTube (above).
The latest GDCo Show talks the most generic names for games on Steam and whether it really matters what your game is called, a PvE mode in extraction shooter standout ARC Raiders, a lawsuit in Roblox exposing the (lack of) contracts behind many Roblox successes, and the question of Xbox/PS platform split on GTA VI getting spicy…
[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.]