[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.]
Hey, game discovery aficionados – we’re sending this on July 4th in the U.S., where many of you will be waving flags and eating burgers (mm, burgers.) But we prepped this newsletter early, so y’all don’t miss your slice of cherry game discovery pie…
Before we start, we wanted to credit the excellent MusicEXP newsletter for pointing out an oddity: the release of KORG Gadget for PlayStation 5: “created in Unreal Engine… [it] includes 16 unique embedded synthesizer and drum machine gadget instruments.” Yep, it’s a PS5 ‘softsynth’. (Does anyone remember the Nintendo DS one from Korg?)
And let’s finish out the week in style by meandering around game platform & discovery news, like so:
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Valve did some Steam-related dev talks at GDC 2025 which we covered select highlights from, and re-recorded versions are starting to appear on YouTube. The first is from Erik Peterson, on “the Steam features and tools you can use to run betas and playtests”, including case studies (above) & a lot of useful info.
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Those ‘significant’ Xbox layoffs – at both a studio and platform level – are dominating the news. IGN has Phil Spencer’s memo to staff, and the This Week In Video Games newsletter has a good round-up of some of the specifics (Everwild, Perfect Dark, a Zenimax MMO canceled, The Initiative shut down.)
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We don’t have a big thinkpiece on Xbox changes, but lack of Game Pass growth and ZIRP-fueled over-acquisition is a big part of it. Post-ATVI, not only does 2 + 2 not equal 5, but Xbox is underperforming other Microsoft divisions in $ growth, making it vulnerable to excess layoffs as a % of the parent company’s 4% cuts.
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Review aggregation site Metacritic is both oddly outdated and still of interest, so this detailed interview with co-founder Marc Doyle is interesting. Some outlets get higher weighting, but it’s “subtle”, and “an unweighted score would only differ by ‘maybe a point or two’ from the final Metacritic score.”
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The top-grossing mobile games of June? Honor Of Kings, Whiteout Survival, LastWar, Royal Match & Monopoly Go all topped $100m, with Pokemon Go ($62m) surging into the Top 10. And the top downloads are again headed by Block Blast!, Roblox, and Subway Surfers, with Pizza Ready surging up to #4.
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The start of quarterly Steam sales often stresses Valve’s wishlist reporting back-end. But the 2025 Summer Sale has made wishlist reporting inoperable for the entire sale, making some people faux (or even real!) annoyed: “What is my 30% fee for if you can’t even collect and process data in a timely manner? ;-p”
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We know Xbox is bringing plenty of titles (Forza Horizon, Oblivion Remaster) to PlayStation consoles. Going the other way? Arrowhead & PlayStation’s co-op shooter Helldivers 2 – a big hit on Steam and PS5 – is coming to Xbox Series X & S on August 26th.
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Nintendo’s ability to eShop-block Switch 2s for unauthorized use is coming under government scrutiny: “The Sao Paulo branch of Brazil’s Consumer Protection and Defence program, has stated in a press release that it is challenging Nintendo‘s ability to brick Nintendo Switch 2 consoles when it wants, citing certain aspects of it ‘abusive.’”
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This PC Gamer piece on ‘patient gaming’ – waiting for discounts on $70 games – is v.interesting: “In broader Internet culture, chronological social media feeds that emphasize immediacy…. are losing out to recommendation algorithms that emphasize personalization and discovery. ‘New’ is being replaced by ‘new to me,’ and perhaps patient gamers are poised to inherit the hobby as result.”
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We heart alternative taxonomies, and Florent Louis showed us his own game taxonomy (presentation link) instead of the Steam-based genre tags we used in a recent newsletter. His categories? “Rhythm, maturity, eccentricity, gore, bizarre, and accessibility” – each with three ‘nuanced’ options. Weird, but thought-provoking.
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Microlinks: a drop-in replacement for the current PSSR upscaling tech will ship on PS5 Pro in 2026, per Mark Cerny; Amazon’s July ‘free with Prime Gaming’ titles include Saints Row games & Death Stranding on Luna; Newzoo’s report on IP popularity by region looks at interest in Arcane, Pokemon & more by geography.
Since it’s the start of July, and June 2025 was a pretty interesting month for new Steam releases, we thought we’d take a look at the top new games of the month on the dominant PC game distribution platform.
So here’s GDCo’s ‘top-grossing new Steam games’ estimates (above), with analysis, and the obvious caveat that extrapolating this data ain’t easy, so treat it approximately:
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Stellar Blade outperformed our (significant) expectations: we’d expected this Shift Up-developed, Sony published PS5-first action-er to do well. But 192,000 CCU and $80.4m in gross revenue in 2+ weeks? Wow – its ‘Hype score to first week Steam reviews’ number was 3.2x the median. (Much overperformance was in China, which had 58% of its Steam players, and where Shift Up self-published.)
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Dune: Awakening, Rematch & Deltarune all beat $20m gross: even being available for a partial month, these three titles did great. Dune: Awakening fulfilled Funcom’s survival promise. And the two others are also doing great on console – soccer game Rematch on PS5, and quirky RPG Deltarune on Switch 1&2.
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Broken Arrow is the biggest game you’ve never heard of: it’s more expensive ($50) and targeted to hardcore RTS wargame fanatics, but Steel Balalaika and Slitherine’s complex title has consistently hit 20k CCU since its June 19th launch – hence #6 on our list with $12.1m gross.
It’s genuinely nice to see such a range of styles of game in the Top 10, by the way – also highlighting clone sci-fi survival-er The Alters (#7, $5.1m), first-person horror IP continuation Five Nights At Freddy’s: Secret Of The Mimic (#9, $4.5m) and dating sim where you romance your own household objects (?!) Date Everything! (#10, $4.4m.)
Next, here’s an alternate view (above) where we look at units sold for the top new Steam titles released in June 2025. Some different games bubble to the top:
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Peak is #1 with a bullet – and we’re underestimating it a bit: we have the hit $5-$8 co-op climbing game at 2.9 million units from June 16th-30th. But having chatted to the devs (story on Tuesday!), it was a tad more by the end of the month, since its casual virality sports a 120x or more Steam ‘review to sales’ ratio. Niice.
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Much of the Top 10 by units is similar to the $ chart, which is notable: you still see Stellar Blade (#2), Dune (#3), Deltarune (#5) and Rematch (#6) high up these charts, all with >850k Steam units. This indicates a lack of super-cheap megahits besides Peak, at least in June.
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Two Chinese FMV dating games make it into the unit-based charts: that’d be Revenge On Gold Diggers (#4, 1.1m), which is the subject of much controversy in China over its ‘relationship scam’ angle, and the historical cultivation adventure-themed God Bless, Or Goddess (#10, 180k.)
Finally, we thought we’d show the Top 10 performing games overall for June 2025 on Steam, ranked by revenue – often more pertinent than units, in this discount-heavy market. Specifically:
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Counter-Strike 2 is top of the charts, because it generally is: It’s fairly difficult for us to estimate revenue mainly from top-grossing charts, if a game is at #1. But we reckon Valve’s F2P shooter grossed $134m in June – impressive.
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Stellar Blade’s pricing in China helped its overall revenue: the game (#2, $80.4m) is priced at ¥268, only 37.5% less than the $60 U.S. pricing. That’s 35% more than Steam’s recommended pricing of ¥198 – and Chinese players seem fine with it.
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Elden Ring: Nightreign & Black Myth picked up good continued revenue: the multiplayer Elden Ring spinoff released on May 29th, so makes sense it’s #5 with $41.2m more revenue. (Its Steam total is nearing $100m.) And megahit Black Myth: Wukong had its first-ever 20% off sale in June, adding $21.6m (#8).
It’s been a very quiet week for new releases on Steam (Summer Sale!) So our GDCo Plus or Pro-exclusive section this week will mainly focus on the top upcoming games for the rest of 2025, in terms of Steam wishlists. And it’s an interesting list!
