The end of 2019 is nearly upon us, and much like the past few years, Valve has now released the list of the best selling and most played PC games across a variety of categories. You can find the full breakdown over at Steam, but for now I'd like to focus on the two main categories: the top sellers and the most popular games.
When it comes to the best sellers, things are pretty similar to last year with games like Dota 2, Warframe, PUBG, GTA V and Rainbow Six Siege occupying a prominent spot. However, the one trend I am somewhat surprised by is the continued success of highly challenging games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Monster Hunter: World.
In my eyes, the Souls games have always been a very niche series as they are completely uncompromising with their difficulty - you either adapt to it or you don't get to continue playing. So to see Sekiro, as well as Monster Hunter: World, appear at the very top of Steam's list is quite encouraging. It means that players are more than willing to rise up to the challenge if the game itself is good, so I can only hope this will inspire developers to create games that don't just follow trends, but instead try to do their own thing regardless of how unusual that may be.
As for the most played list, it is once again quite similar, with only a few new additions from some of the most hyped games out there like Red Dead: Redemption 2, Halo, Destiny 2 and even Sekiro. While this list is slightly misleading due to it only counting the highest simultaneous number of players rather than long-term player engagement, it does show that a steady stream of updates can keep even old games relevant. The best example here is probably Terraria as it's nearly a decade old at this point, and it still managed to have over 50,000 simultaneous players, which is beyond impressive for such a 'small' indie game!
Besides simply celebrating the best and most successful games of the year, this is also a pretty good time to grab some of them as a fair few are on a deep discount as a part of the Steam Winter Sale. So check out the list, pick out the ones you like, and have fun!