This year's most played games on Steam only feature two 2025 releases

Another year is done and dusted, and for many it can be a fun time to look back at what you've been playing on the games you've spent the most time with (unless you're an Xbox fan). It may also be interesting to see exactly which games dominated our collective free time during 2025, and once again Steam offered an interesting list of the most played titles during 2025.

Unsurprisingly, it's littered with big hits like Counter Strike and Marvel Rivals, and a host of other multiplayer games that control your life as you go through these stages. However, one of the most interesting aspects of this list is that only two of the 12 games were actually released in 2025.

This year's most played games on Steam only feature two 2025 releases

We know that people are spending less on new games at the moment, which was very evident after Steam Replay revealed that only 14 percent of the total play time across Steam in 2025 was spent on games that launched this year. Of the 12 most played games this year, Peak and Repo are the only entries this year, with no Arc Raiders, Hollow Knight: Silksong or Monster Hunter Wilds in sight. In fact, there are more games on the list that are more than a decade old.

Peak, REPO and Schedule 1 characters on pink and black backgrounds.

Almost half of this year's top-performing games on Steam came from Double-A or Indie Studios

Times are changing.

Stardew Valley, Terraria, and even Left 4 Dead 2 were played more than the vast majority of 2025's offerings, which makes sense just because of how popular they've been for so long. It's possible that games like Arc Raiders could have appeared if they had launched earlier in the year, missing the advantage of not having a full 12 months.

Then again, even if you expand the list of this year's most played titles to 24, you still only get titles like Schedule 1, Battlefield 6, and Call of Duty, two of which you'd expect to be on the list every year they release. In fact, Call of Duty was in the top 12 in both 2024 and 2023, which reinforces the claim that Black Ops 6 was extremely disappointing this year in terms of players.

Of all the games that could represent 2025, it's interesting to see so-called “friendslop” games like Peak and Repo above everything else, which may point to where the industry is headed. People will either want their cheap and fun experiences to play with their friends, or they'll stick with the game they've always played, and it will be interesting to see how the industry adapts.