The only way to discovery success? Escape your filter bubble!
Also: Roblox's Jan. hits and lots of game discovery 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.]
It wouldn’t be a post-event newsletter without various people having picked up some post-conference germs, and today’s no exception. *raises hand* - we’ll try to be cogent! Also: thanks to today’s newsletter sponsor, player relationship platform Firstlook.gg.
Before we start, did you know that Ghost in the Shell movie director Mamoru Oshii has played 10,000 hours of Fallout 4 while refusing to do the main quest, build settlements, or travel with anyone but your canine sidekick Dogmeat: “I’d much rather be beaten to death by Deathclaws”. (Wow - thx, PC Gamer.)
[FREE DEMO OF GDCo PRO? You too can get a free demo of our GameDiscoverCo Pro company-wide ‘Steam deep dive’ & console data by contacting us today - ~90 orgs have it. Or, signing up to GDCo Plus gets the rest of this newsletter and Discord access, plus more.]
Game discovery news: v.secure Belmont deaths?
Starting off, let’s look at the latest game platform & discovery news tidbits, courtesy of our news gathering largesse:
The latest unreleased trending Steam games, according to GameDiscoverCo Pro’s 7-day wishlist charts (Feb 10th-17th), shows Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding 2 (already ~2m on PS5, GDCo estimates!) confirm PC and hit #1. Also PlayStation showcased? New 2D franchise addition Castlevania: Belmont's Curse (#2).
Elsewhere, brand new 'friendslop'-adjacent title Totally Secure Airport (#3) is doing _great_ with streamers, as is Burglin' Gnomes at #6. Extra new & notable? Freshly Steam-added classic franchise PlayStation showcases Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection 2 (#5) and intriguing spinoff Silent Hill: Townfall (#7).
A new Bloomberg report (relayed by VGC) claims: “Sony… is now considering pushing back the debut of its next PlayStation console to 2028 or even 2029” due to RAM price increases around the AI boom, also adding that “Nintendo is considering raising the price of Switch 2 later this year.” (We can believe it.)
Takeaways from DICE? Tim Morten has a very handy set of bullet-points, higlighting VC funding in retreat and a ‘Wild West’ of non-publisher funding channels - but “substantially more sellers than buyers”. Simon Pullman also highlights 3 themes: “Funding models, Data, discovery, and audience behavior, AI.”
As spotted by SteamDB: “Steam added the option to attach [PC] hardware specs when writing or updating a Steam User Review.” It’s optional and in the Beta versions of the OS update right now, but this could be genuinely helpful over time. (It’ll be shown to other users, and hopefully available to devs?)
The latest thinkpiece from Martin Walfisz discusses current game biz instability, explaining the underlying structural pressures: “Competition is cumulative… Demand has fragmented… Consumer spending has concentrated… Discovery is volatile… Capital follows evidence.” The general idea: “back to normal” = not a thing.
Circana’s comments on video game trends for 2026? The firm notes that “GTA VI holds the highest purchase intent ever recorded in Circana’s tracking history”, thus its Nov. release could be a big deal for hardware, also adding in general: “younger players are shifting more heavily toward PC and mobile”, vs. trad console.
Elsewhere, Jordan Brown discusses the rise of ‘productivity games’ on Steam like Spirit City, which “typically include focus & productivity tools like a pomodoro timer, task list, focus music, calming sound effects”, as he notes: “9 out of the 34 games I identified have over 500 reviews, with 3 of them making over 1 million dollars!”
Steam rolled out its official top 50 new releases of Jan. 2026, sorted in tranches of Gold, Silver, and Bronze, and interesting because DLC is also mashed up in there. (We spotted Dead By Daylight x Stranger Things Chapter 2, some pricey Dynasty Warriors DLC and the new Cult Of The Lamb DLC all in the Top 12.)
Kirill Oreshkin (Polden) & Anton Slashcev (Playhero) put together an infographic on promoting your PC game via ‘marketing beats’ which we dug: for example releasing a demo 1-2 months before Next Fest (also our favored approach) & ‘scope is your biggest enemy: cut features, not quality’.
Microlinks: PlayStation Plus’ Game Catalog for Feb. includes Spider-Man 2, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, & Neva; Meta sold over 7 million smart glasses in 2025, effectively tripling YoY sales; new Xbox Game Pass additions include Kingdom Come Deliverance II, Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and more.
[BTW, if you checked our Steam keywords research document from Friday’s analysis and it was empty, we accidentally set it editable, and somebody blanked it. Heyy! It’s back now…]
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Discovery success? Escape your filter bubble…!
At DICE last week, we had a chance to chat to some folks - in rideshares or just in Las Vegas as a whole - who are not (as we are) professionally consumed with video games. And it was fascinating, because it reminded us how ‘filter bubble’-based media is now.
That word itself can be read prejudicially, but we don’t mean it that way. Reminder: it’s the idea that “personalized searches, recommendation systems, and algorithmic curation selectively presents information to each user” as they access info online. And in order to make your game successful, you need to think carefully about how this all works.
For example, did you know both New Kids On The Block (above) and Backstreet Boys are playing Las Vegas? It’s ‘90s boy band heaven - for those who care. And why didn’t you know? Not in your filter bubble. So yep: there’s no longer a monoculture where everyone gets shown the same few games, movies, and albums repeatedly.
An example of a personal ‘filter bubble’ we ran into last week - from a non-attendee of DICE - was someone whose recent impressions of games was via listening to American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis’ podcast (!), since Ellis’ partner plays games.
In terms of media consumption, everyone has viewing, reading, and watching habits which are - well - extremely personalized. So the real issue here is: how do you get on everyone’s radar?
And the key here is simple. You need to do something interesting enough with your game that it escapes the smaller ‘true fans of your title’ bubble, and makes it into more people’s filter bubbles. If people don’t know about it, people won’t buy it. And most people don’t know about most things. Some examples:
We were chatting to Lyrical Games, and its upcoming roguelite Erosion has a great hook - “when you die, the world jumps forward a decade”. Look at its third-party shortform video hits from Jestr.gg (above) and this one from Dexerto.
Even though its execution wasn’t on point, co-op ‘stay quiet IRL or die’ title Don’t Scream Together has now sold 400,000 copies on Steam in just over two months. Again, the idea is strong enough to punch through filter bubbles.
The upcoming Darkhaven is from many of the Diablo/Diablo II creators, but adds open, procgen sandbox worlds with destructible terrain to the isometric grind of the OG ARPG. (Look, here’s a third-party TikTok-er getting excited about it.)
Of the above titles, the first is a traditional genre game with a big twist that may (or may not!) make the game interesting, but sure made you look. The second just makes casual players want to try it. And the third twins a familiar (and under-served) genre with some smart extensions of the formula. All are different. But all escape bubbles.
But the overall point here - and I hope this isn’t incredibly obvious - is: to spread your reach, you need to commandeer more strands of media that reach into everyone’s own filter bubbles. Otherwise they will never hear you! That’s why getting into NorthernLion’s playlist is a big deal. It’s a way in to people’s attention…
This view of the world is somewhat (or possibly very!) different to traditional push marketing. Shouting into the void - if you have the wrong underlying concept - won’t scale a thing. And it means that to succeed on PC/console, you may have to look more at crafting your game concept from scratch for this kind of filter bubble traversal.
Thus: the relevant question is: since nobody has enough reach on their own, which high-reach set of people will be talking about your game? Maybe you won’t get on Bret Easton Ellis’ podcast - esp. if Quentin Tarantino is on there talking about Toy Story already. But if you don’t have a plausible answer to this, you may have an issue…
Roblox in Jan.: hi, Escape Tsunami for Brainrots!
Finally, a quick look at Jan 2026’s top-earning Roblox charts (above), as documented by David Taylor at Creator Games. And you’ll see plenty of the obvious folks in top-earning (Rivals, Steal A Brainrot, Blox Fruits, Adopt Me!), but that one notable new entry - Escape Tsunami For Brainrots.
Why did it hit so big from scratch? David explains: “This wasn’t the first game of its kind. There were 10+ nearly identical versions launched before it. The core gameplay is simple PvE: players run down a path while an object hurtles toward them. Take cover in time or get wiped out and start over.”
Yet there was one key difference: “It was the first to introduce a collection mechanic for Brainrots, inspired by Don’t Wake the Brainrots - a game that briefly reached the top 30 earners last September but has since largely faded…. Recombining mechanics across games can reignite simple gameplay loops that players had grown tired of.” Roblox: always fascinating?
[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.]