[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 October wends on, we’re not done with the analysis. So today’s newsletter revisits some summer debuts on Steam to ask - though concurrent players aren’t the be-all and end-all for paid PC games, which ones are actually holding up, a few weeks later?
Before we start, we love it that the Pokémon Fossil Museum exhibition is visiting Denver in May 2027 - it’s currently at the Field Museum in Chicago. What is it? Check this YouTube video for a walkthrough, but basically, “real-world fossils and casts alongside life-size models of iconic Fossil Pokémon.” Those are some big bones…
[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 discovery news: Squadron 42 pops up high..
Let’s start out the week with a look at the top game discovery and platform news, as follows:
GDCo Pro's estimates of 'trending' unreleased Steam games by 'new wishlists in the last 7 days', Oct 5th-12th saw the Star Citizen devs’ single-player space adventure Squadron 42 at #1 with a bullet (+175k wishlists), with "2-player asymmetrical co-op rally chaos" game Left! Left! LEFT! (+133k WLs) up at #2.
In the Top 5 again? That'd be AI voice job sim Scam With Your Friends (#3, +120k WLs) and cyberpunk shopkeeper sim Probably Stolen (#5, +80k WLs). Also brand new: 2D point and click sequel Machinarium 2 (#4, +110k), which was the leading wishlist increase-r from the October Triple-I Initiative event.
Since PC games are hot, we’d be remiss in not pointing out worldwide PC shipments down over 20% in Q3 2026, according to IDC, “the second consecutive decline and a deeper one than the 3.8% drop in Q2.” That’s due to AI-related supply constraints and vendors stocking up ahead of price boosts, but nonetheless….
Xbox’s brand new PC app got shown early to Windows Central’s Jez Corden, and he digs it - it’s “a lot faster than the previous app, particularly when it comes to loading in my large 1,400+ library of Xbox titles from across the years”, and has a clearer UI. (So basically removing the treacle from the app and starting again… hurray?)
We dug Jake Birkett’s learnings after after shipping Forbidden Solitaire to 2,000+ Overwhelmingly Positive Steam reviews: “Ideas are worth a lot… [The game’s] core idea was ten times easier to market than anything else we have ever made.” Also, 500+ polish items got skipped cos “none of them would have impacted sales in any meaningful way.”
Showcase alerts: AshleyRoboto & Jesse Cox’s Convergence Showcase last week featured 60+ games, with first-person dark fantasy Heathen (+30k wishlists) one of the biggest winners; narrative game Steam showcase with streaming panels LudoNarraCon is on right now, ft. a ton of interesting story-ish games.
In ‘checking Steam doc changes to see what Valve’s being tested by’ news, folks, you can include ‘NEW UPDATE’ or ‘NEW EVENT/DLC NOW AVAILABLE’ text on your game capsule images, but “Text cannot include any other call-to-action not related to the new content, such as “Wishlist now!” or “Pre-purchase now!” or “Available Oct 4th””
Circana’s August 2026 U.S. hardware & select software charts are here, with spending down 9% YoY to $4.3b, and console hardware a big issue: “August 2026 video game hardware unit sales fell 15% versus a year ago to 559k units, the lowest total for an August month since 2013 (423k units).”
A couple of other high (low?) lights from Circana: “The average price paid for a new unit of [non-PC/mobile] video game hardware in the US reached an August record $541. The previous August record was $476, set a year ago.” Overall, Switch 2 is top (unit/dollar) in August and 2026 YTD, with PS5 ranked second in both categories.
Our Steam datamining buddies says there’s an ‘achievement grouping’ closed dev Beta going on, with groupable & archivable achievements, groups that require DLC ownership & more. (It’s a clean-up, responding to ‘100% completion’ fan feedback - here’s some analysis of the underlying data from a different source.)
To end: a ‘new media’ thing that competes with a) higher-budget efforts b) games? Vertical ‘microdramas’ - filmed TV shows w/microtransactions or subscriptions. And the New York Times has a good overview of the new stars coming up in this algorithm-first business. (More short, sharp disruption to the status quo, huh?)
OUR SPONSOR: Creators.gg, free creator programs in minutes
Finding creators is a grind. You email 200 YouTubers, hear back from six, and hand out keys with no idea what happens next. Creators.gg puts your game in front of 20,000+ creators looking for their next title.
Listing is free and takes under 10 minutes. Start with a key drop and auto-approval rules, then scale as far as you want: CPM campaigns, performance-based rewards, or a full Creator Battle Pass.
100+ programs are live right now, including first-time key drops: Start free today.
Steam games with CCU ‘staying power’ - how?
Obviously, GDCo really tries to tell you which games are doing well as Steam debuts in a particular month. But something we did earlier this year? Coming back to the charts a few weeks later, to see which games people are still playing. (Back then we found Librarian: Tidy Up The Arcane Library!, which has spawned a new microgenre.)
This time, we decided to look at August 2026’s top games, as of mid-October. If you look at our original round-up, the two top games - friendslopper How To Fish and co-op adventure game Big Walk - are still top by ‘today’s concurrent users’. (And Big Walk is at an impressive 30% of peak CCU!) But there’s some interlopers in here:
So we’ll pick the games that we talked about less at August month-end, but still have good CCUs, or have even grown them?) And we’ll get an idea of the types of games retaining interest*. (*Reminder: all these titles may eventually hit 3x (or more?) lifetime revenue, compared to right now. So we’re looking at some good wins, here…) Let’s see:
Survival Log: resource re-arranging x zombie survival?
Survival Log ($11) is a “zombie-apocalypse hoarding survival sim” that grew all the way to 13k CCU after launch, and is hanging out at 7k peak (300k units, #3 by CCU.). It’s interesting in that it’s heavy on the building & arranging and (relatively) light on the zombie survival, tho it has a tower defense-like ‘zombie protection’ part of the game.
Here’s a good Steam player review, explaining: “Resource management is front and center, balancing food, power, and maintenance materials to keep everything running… there are multiple mechanics that integrate the survivor PC with other NPCs in the game world through cell phone texts, drones, and support missions”
It does use AI heavily for in-game 2D item pictures, and interestingly is published by Chinese mobile company Lilith Games (AFK Journey), which helps to explain why 80% of players are Chinese, according to GDCo Pro. But it has Western interest too.
ReStory: chill electronics repair = smart angle
To be honest, we almost did a full newsletter on ReStory ($20), which is a “a chill, narrative-driven shop management simulator” where you “run an electronics repair shop [and] meticulously restore nostalgic Y2K-era devices.”
It’s still at #6 in CCU for August releases and we have it at >600k units including off-Steam keys (not included above), and likely >$10m gross on Steam alone. Its CCU is ~15% of peak, but it’s performed because it got two things right: the vibes (mm, retro consoles, cell phones and music players!) and the minute-to-minute gameplay.
We like quoting Steam player reviews, and here’s a prime example: “This is the perfect mix of cozy vibes, satisfying repairs, and the dangerous phrase “just one more job / day.” The gameplay is relaxing, the atmosphere is comfy, and somehow fixing imaginary electronics is more therapeutic than fixing my actual life.”
Sandustry: megacomplex pixel automation bliss
Sandustry ($15, often $10 on discount) is “a factory automation game where every pixel is a resource waiting to be mined, mixed, processed, or destroyed.” This is not - on its own - a very pretty game, but what it has is system and physics-based automation galore.
The point of the game is to derive gold from sand by shaking it out after excavating it, and then manage byproducts of the process - it’s a giant sandbox sand factory (ha ha!), and this genre actually does lack well-made, open-ended games like it.
This helped the game hit ~300k sold and is keeping its CCU at #7, even as some games that sold more copies dip in concurrent users. Why? One review: “I'll just check this out for 5 mins. It seems interesting. 6 Hours later... finally I've mastered this production chain....”
Combolands: why not a roguelike citybuilder?
Combolands ($10) is “a tiny roguelike citybuilder offering deep strategy in a bite-sized package”, and it’s a bit more modest, at least than 100k sold, but made it to #10 in ‘today’s top CCU’ for Aug. debuts, and is at >50% of its peak 2,000+ CCU - impressive.
This is a classic ‘go apply roguelike mechanics to a new genre’. And it’s been done really well/crunchily, as you place resource tiles from randomly selected resources, go to a shop, tweak things mightily, and see the results. It’s a really intriguing mashup, though not super heavy on the city-building complexity.
We liked this Steam user review from a ‘mid-40s dad’ who has little time for games, saying: “This feels spiritually a bit like when someone makes a 'faster paced' 4x.” So once again, we’re getting incremental/roguelike short runs & playtimes applied to historically slower, more complex genres. Feels like a… trend?
Finally, we wanted to mention - but not fully examine - Mimic Party ($7), which is “an online 1-5 player voice party game. You hear a sound. You get one shot to reproduce it with your own voice. A local AI grades how close you got.” It’s janky but has a really interesting underlying idea which is very streamer-friendly, hence the 300k copies sold & counting.
So it’s interesting: we’re not saying concurrent users a few weeks after launch is the only arbiter of success. (You can be a $60 game with low CCU now but a finite campaign, so you’ll keep doing great in sales and building big revenue off lower CCU.) But by cutting the data this way, you can feel the ‘vibes’ of emerging game styles that have more retention. And feeling the ‘vibes’: increasingly important…
GameDiscoverCo Show: how many Next Fest demos?
It happened again - yes, 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 discusses the structure & amount of games lined up for Oct's Steam Next Fest, how making 'regular' trailers vs. short-form video influencer output differs, if Xbox is going to be making Minecraft more commercially minded & how games need to compete in the 'attention economy' with the inexorable rise of gambling.
[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.]