[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 weekend-max (?) by listening to Yousuke Yukimatsu’s all-The Prodigy mix on NTS Radio (cue much crunchy beats), we’re delighted to say the GameDiscoverCo newsletter has returned. (Disclaimer: we’re not voodoo people. Or magic people.)
Before we start, our buddy Chris at HowToMarketAGame (excellent blogs/newsletters here!) is doing a survey on Steam marketing & wishlists, grabbing (with your permission) aggregated wishlist, sales, and traffic data direct from your games’ Steamworks. Help him out, and we’ll all see the benchmarked, anonymized results…
[THE DEEPEST PC/CONSOLE DATA? You can get a free demo of our GameDiscoverCo Pro company-wide ‘Steam deep dive’ & console data, inc. MCP, by reaching out today - >110 orgs have it. Or, signing up to GDCo Plus gets extra newsletter and Discord access, plus more.]
Game disco news: Guildrun, FF top Steam demos…
Time to check the latest news and trends from game platform & discovery-land. And here’s what we’ve got:
The top Steam demos for unreleased games, as of Sept 9th, 2026, by concurrent users, according to GameDiscoverCo Pro data (above)? Autobattler roguelite Guildrun (#1) is running and running as a chart-topper for ~2 months. But brand new at #2 is original - and anticipated - 'HD-2D' Final Fantasy RPG Resonance.
We’ve looked at co-op scavenger-explorer Nomad Drive (#3) and 'keep quiet' co-op horror game BreathBound (#4), but newish chaotic co-optional rafting game Oar'Some Adventures (#5) and a brand-new demo for 2D cyberpunk sidescroller SlashZero (#15) are both worth peeking at.
ICYMI: Xbox doubled down on Hideo Kojima’s games, signing the formerly PlayStation-published Physint - after Sony dropped it in June - to add to OD, while also “collaborating across film and television to bring new stories to broader audiences.” (PS dropping it makes sense if Death Stranding 1/2 underperformed expectations & the fact Physint would have been PS5 only, per Bloomberg.)
As I reported on LinkedIn on Tuesday: “After its weekly maintenance window, Steam unfortunately rolled out a major bug around achievements. Automated data collectors of Steam achievement info [briefly got] data for every single Steam game that has one, even those unreleased... or even unannounced.” (Mainly smaller spoilers, and unfortunate.)
Nintendo’s pair of streaming Direct showcases saw a) the Switch 2 remake of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time confirmed for a Nov. 5th launch, with tie-in Switch 2 hardware also available, and b) Metroid Ravenous revealed for Switch 2 debut in Jan. 2027, alongside a new 3D free-roaming Kirby game and a host of third-party titles (inc. a surprise console debut for Meccha Chameleon.)
Microlinks: Nintendo has a ‘customer appreciation’ game sale that they say is “made possible in part by tariff-related refunds”, haha; Luna has added Remote Play on Amazon Prime, inviting up to 7 players to cloud-game even if they don’t have a Prime membership; Twitch released its ‘State Of Gaming Report’ with handy stats.
Over on Roblox, there’s more egg-stealing breakthroughs: “Steal an Egg hit another all-time high this weekend… [at] 9.9M peak CCU… ~39% of everyone on Roblox at peak.” (These limited-time ‘Admin Abuse’ events where there’s exclusive items to collect attract massive FOMO - and likely bots. But a lot of the interest is real, folks.)
Ubisoft is testing a workaround for its intrusive Ubisoft Connect PC launcher and Steam, announcing a new Ubisoft Connect Services Steam tool “that keeps Ubisoft game features such as cross-progression, cross-play, player safety, challenges and rewards, among others, without requiring the Ubisoft Connect PC launcher to be installed or launched.” (Another example of third-party launchers backing off of Steam…)
Apple’s new $2,000 iPhone Duo isn’t going to be a major game platform immediately, yet Zenless Zone Zero and UnGodly are being demoed on Apple’s new foldable iOS device, and videos “designed to help developers adapt their games and apps to the new device’s form factor” are already out. So oogle ‘em if you want.
A new Steam Client Beta has a couple of Big Picture Mode additions: a ‘Big Art Mode’ for a more attractive game-specific background, and a ‘Screensaver’ mode “that can be configured to show artwork from recently played games and your recent in-game screenshots.” (Also: Personal Calendar’s better integrated with Big Picture.)
Microlinks, pt.2: GameStop sets a new Q2 profit record at $160m, and it’s thanks to trading cards, not video games; August’s official PlayStation top downloads are headed by Madden & Marvel Tokon for PS5 in North America; Footprints.gg’s top ‘trad media’ mentions of the week are topped by GTA 6, Zelda & Dawnwalker.
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When 1.0 goes nice: Yet Another Zombie Survivors edition!
We don’t do enough ‘here’s what happened at Steam 1.0’ release postmortems here at GameDiscoverCo. So we were delighted when Diana Biszczanik from Awesome Games Studio pinged us re: Yet Another Zombie Survivors ($10-$15), which hit 1.0 on August 20th, after 3 years in Early Access.
(BTW, the slightly flippant name of the Polish indie studio’s latest game can be explained if you look at their rich heritage of ‘Yet Another Zombie..’ games, which started with Yet Another Zombie Defense all the way back in 2014, haha.)
To set context: this is a run-based ‘bullet heaven’ game, a la Vampire Survivors, but with an ability to recruit multiple other protagonists to run alongside you, and unlockable, permanent upgrades & skill trees. (Bonus: everyone loves zombies.)
Diana was kind enough to give us some of the Steam stats around 1.0. Directly from her:
- 5.5k peak players on day one. Our Early Access day-one peak was 2.5k.
- 9.9k peak players during the 1.0 launch weekend, vs. 10.2k during the EA launch weekend.
- 15k copies sold on launch day, roughly the same as during our EA launch.
- 88k copies sold in the first two weeks of 1.0, vs. 93k sold in the first two weeks of EA.
- On launch day, 53% of players were returning owners coming back to check out 1.0, while 47% were new players.
- 7-10% of players are on Steam Deck.
YAZS’ Steam 1.0 concurrents got within an inch of Early Access CCU - a great result. (Related: of the 10 most recent ‘notable’ Early Access graduates in our GDCo Pro, 30% of them had 1.0 CCU above Early Access. You can get a decent bump in CCUs from returning players without selling new copies. But to beat EA launch, you need more.)
We’ll get to analysis of how the 1.0 was ‘pleasant’ shortly. But wanted to show this GDCo Pro graph of total YAZS PC sales (we estimate ~750k, inc. Steam keys, and ~$5m gross) to point out one big takeaway: your Steam 1.0 is a nice shot in the arm, but most games that do good at 1.0 have been selling very nicely in Early Access, too:
Related: 1.0 is also a nice time for your console release, and YAZS is no exception. Survivors-likes aren’t incredibly strong on consoles, but inexpensive console ports can be handy: GDCo forecasts combined PlayStation & Xbox sales at <50k so far. (That includes sales in Game Preview on Xbox for ~12 months before release.)
The country breakdown of YAZS, btw? It’s this, direct from the devs: China 29.5%; United States 18.5%; Germany 6.4%; Korea, Republic of 3.8%; Russian Federation 3.6%; Japan 3.0%; United Kingdom 2.5%; Canada 2.2%; France 2.2%; Other 28.3%. (That’s strong Chinese interest, indeed..)
One final visualization with GDCo Pro data - this is ‘what do YAZS players also play >10x as much as the average Steam player?’, sorted by highest player overlap. The OG Vampire Survivors heads the list, and subgenre hits Brotato, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, and Soulstone Survivors also make the list with >30% overlap:
One thing many of these games have in common is a replayable, enjoyably divergent game loop. How enjoyable? We were piqued to hear that YAZS has a median time played on Steam of 11 hours and 12 minutes, and an average of a whopping 21 hours 18 minutes. For a game that’s cost $7-$15, that’s a lot of play per hour, $-wise…
So let’s talk about why 1.0 went well for the game. Chatting to Diana, here’s what we think made a difference:
Tripling of influencer contact & shifted reach at 1.0: “[At EA], we reached out to around 500 influencers. [At 1.0], we expanded that to around 1,500 creators focused on bullet heaven games, roguelites, and zombie-themed games. Since YAZS is also great on Steam Deck, we reached out to Steam Deck-focused media as well.” (Also JP/CN media.)
Clear explanation of the new elements since Early Access: this may be obvious. But if you’ve been ‘all polish, no new elements’ during EA, it’s difficult to get people to re-engage with your game at 1.0. Diana explains: “We basically added the equivalent of 3-4 major updates into one release, especially the hub with missions and some lore content, which isn't something you typically see in bullet heaven games.”
Succinct and direct outreach in terms of pitch: how do you get people to look at your game again if it’s been out for 3+ years? Diana shared her exact pitch email to creators & media, which plays up the game’s differences from what are, frankly, a giant mass of Survivors-likes being pitched to streamers recently.
The result: high profile YouTube videos from folks like Gohjoe (128k views), from Dex (118k views), and from Aboboknows & more. There’s also a lot of discussion of ‘meta’ strategies in YouTube videos & comments - always good news for a game’s buzz levels.
With 72 games tagged ‘Bullet Heaven’ launching on Steam in August 2026 alone (GDCo data), here’s part of Diana’s media/creator pitch differentiating the game. And I think it works - the classic ‘you like this subgenre, but there’s a twist & also depth’:
“What makes YAZS different?
Control a 3-member squad - unlike most games in the genre, you can play up to three Survivors in a single run.
Create wild synergies - unlock Survivors, combine their abilities, and experiment with powerful team compositions across multiple game modes.
Build your playstyle - level up and choose perks, abilities, and nodes from 9 skill trees.
Fight new challenges - take on arena bosses, complete challenges, and unlock new achievements
Explore more than just combat - the 1.0 update introduces quests, story content, and a HUB area to return to between runs.”
Let’s sum up: YAZS is an already nicely executed game that added a lot of depth over 3 years. And 1.0 allowed an influx of both new and old players for a ‘marketing beat’ that’s a really pleasant boost. Long playtime, cheaper cost, what’s not to like?
Steam 1.0 launches are rarely transformative, with a handful of weird exceptions like Baldur’s Gate 3. But they don’t have to be, if your team is sized & scaled correctly. If you treat 1.0 as a potential mid-level win if you have momentum, not a ‘second launch’ Hail Mary opportunity, you’ll be in good shape…?
This week on Steam: it’s all about Wardogs, innit?
