Steam News - Alden
Today we've launched a new section of Steam dedicated to ranking the most popular games on Steam. This new section includes real-time charts for top selling and most played games, as well as weekly top sellers and monthly top new releases.

Check out the new charts here: https://store.steampowered.com/charts/

This new section replaces the old 'stats' page on Steam and provides a better overview for what is hot on Steam right now. The new top-selling lists rank games based on total revenue, including all sources such as DLC and in-game transactions so we can all get a more complete picture of which games players are excited about getting into and continuing to play. This new method of calculating revenue is also being deployed across various top lists throughout the Steam store, including the Top Sellers tab on Steam's homepage, genre and tag pages.

Here is a closer look at what's new:


Charts Overview Page

The new Steam Charts overview page provides a quick summary of which games are selling well, being played the most, and how many users are online. Plus, links to quickly jump to the most recent weekly and monthly charts.

And you can continue to find links here to the Steam Hardware Survey, Download Stats, and Customer Support Stats.


Real-time Top Sellers

We've had real-time Top Sellers sections on various pages across Steam for well over a decade, even broken out into top lists for individual tags, genres, and themes. You can still find those by visiting any tag or genre page, or simply going to the search page on Steam and sorting by top sellers. Today's update builds on that history with a few notable improvements in the Steam Charts view:
  • Number of weeks on chart - We've added indication of how many weeks a game has been on the top sellers chart.
  • Weekly change in rank - We've added indication of how many positions a game has changed in rank, if any, compared with the previous week.
  • Region switcher - For a set of most popular countries on Steam, we generate country-specific top sellers lists as a default so the lists can pick up on regional differences in customer interests. By default, we'll show you charts for your own country if we have them, but you can always switch to the global view or to another country's view if you are curious.
  • Total revenue - This list charts how well games are selling right now, including all editions (standard, deluxe, etc) of the game as well as DLC and in-game transactions. If an individual DLC is selling well enough on it's own to make the chart, we'll show the DLC entry as well so you can see when exciting new game expansions are making a splash.
Check out the real-time top sellers chart: https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/global


Real-time Most Played

The Most Played list charts the top 100 games based on the number of players in the game right now, along with an indication of the recent peak in player count for each of those top games. You can also switch to a view sorted by daily players which ranks the games based on the total number of unique players over the past 24 hours.

Check out the real-time most played chart: https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed


Weekly Top Sellers Charts

The new weekly charts show the top 100 best-selling games based on revenue earned starting and ending each week on Monday at 10am Pacific. These lists show how many weeks in a row each game has been on the weekly charts and any change in rank from the previous week.

You can easily view previous weeks' charts to see popular games you may have missed. In fact, if you keep going through previous weeks, you can step all the way back to 2005 when there was a grand total of three games available for sale on Steam. Or the week of March 27 when PUBG launched straight to the top of the charts.

What other historical moments in PC gaming can you find immortalized in these weekly charts?


Monthly Top New Releases
For over a year now, we've been compiling a list for each months' top new releases. These monthly charts continue within a new home alongside our other charts, making it easier to look back at previous months' lists.

Check July's Top New Releases: https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topnewreleases/top_july_2022


Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Why include Free to Play games on these charts?
A. Over time we've seen games utilize a wide variety of approaches to pricing. Traditionally our top sellers charts have only included revenue from premium game purchases, but that was obscuring the hugely popular free or inexpensive games in which players purchase season passes, huge expansions, or other forms of new content. This format also lets us combine multiple editions of the same game so as to avoid duplication on the charts.

Q. What if a game is not available on Steam anymore?
A. If a game has been retired and is no longer available for purchase, it will still be listed on historical weekly and monthly charts for when it was top selling game. The charts will also display items not available in your country, or filtered out by your preferences, but in a condensed form.
Steam News - Alden


Grab your weapons and prepare to fight! Bash Bash is a celebration (a “bash”, if you will) of games that fight (or “bash”, if you will). And you WILL!

But let's be honest, narrowing down "games that fight" is a pretty tall order for a broad category. Even when we started the conversations internally about which kinds of games best fit this event, we got into a few... fights (nothing exciting, mostly passive-aggressive email threads). You can see the outcome of said email thread by watching the video portion of this blog post above. But if seeing two idiots in costume attempting to explain a genre doesn't appeal to you, read on for the (slightly) more civilized written version.

Let's explore all the different ways people talk about games that fight by sharing a behind-the-scenes peek at how we looked at these games in the context of Bash Bash, while acknowledging this is one of those kinds of debates for which there is no wrong answer.

Bash Bash At-a-Glance

In Bash Bash, you'll find all kinds of games that feature combat fighting, typically involving melee-type weapons (think: swords, blades, etc.). Those aren't necessarily the ONLY weapons, as you'll often find games with other forms of fighting (like shooting) as a secondary part of the game.

Games you'll find in Bash Bash based on the above definition include:
  • Hack-and-slash
  • Spectacle fighters
  • Character action games
  • Musou

Let's start with hack-and-slash, which is a subgenre of beat-em-ups. Hack-and-slashers are action games that emphasize combat with melee weapons.

We're going to stop here for a sec because we sense a few of you may have read that sentence and thought, "a-HA! Beat-em-ups are Bash Bash worthy, so where are they?"

You aren't wrong, we promise! But beat-em-ups is an even wider genre that includes hand-to-hand combat and we wanted to focus this festival on being a bit more weapons-based. That's why you'll find hack-and-slash along with some hack-and-slash subgenres listed above.

Speaking of which, let's head back to the bulleted list: spectacle fighters. By these, we mean third-person games where the fighting favors a more stylistic, visually-impressive style over a realistic feel.

Character action games are also a subgenre of hack-and-slashers, with more of a focus on the story and journey of the character in the context of the fighting.

Finally, Musou games. Musou refers to games where you battle a lot of enemies. Like... a LOT, and from all angles, too. The history with the name lies in the games by Japanese developer Omega Force, which created many series of such games, typically with 'Warrior' somewhere in the title. Though that's the origin, Musou has since become a more expansive term to be its own subgenre of hack-and-slash.

Some of the features frequently found in games featured in Bash Bash include:
  • RPG elements
  • Third-person gameplay
  • Fast-paced combat
  • Tracked combat combos, or a visual representation of damage
  • Score/ranking system
  • Character moveset/weapons customization

Bottom line:
From now until September 26th at 10am PDT, you'll find discounts and demos on current and upcoming games as described above, and we hope you have as much fun exploring them as we did putting it together! However, if you disagree with our definition of games that Bash, definitely feel free to angrily tweet at us let us know, as we're always looking for fun and creative ways to feature all kinds of genres!

Check it out now: https://store.steampowered.com/category/hack_and_slash/

Steam News - Christen


Today's Steam update brings big updates to the various tag, genre, category, and theme browsing pages across the Steam store. Previously released as a Steam Labs experiment, these new store hubs have been tested and iterated upon with player feedback over the past few months. In fact, you've probably already seen these new hubs in action, as we've made use of them during the Summer Sale or various official themed sales.

As the catalog of titles available on Steam continues to grow, we're working to make it easier for you to find your next favorite game. This update improving the ways you can browse genres, tags, or themes, allowing you to dive deep into each area and narrow down to exactly what you're looking for.

Here's a look at what's new:

New hubs for all categories, themes, genres, and tags
These new pages now make it easy to explore all kinds of different niches within Steam. Whether you are looking for a general category like "Multiplayer", a theme like "Space" or a very specific tag like "Action Roguelike", these new hubs let you explore deep into that category. For many categories, we've hand-built an organization to surface the relevant sub-categories within. For example, the RPG store hub is organized into Action RPGs, Adventure RPGs, JRPGs, and more, so you can drill down to exactly the kind of game you are looking for.



Each hub is personalized for you
The contents of each hub is personalized based on your play history, network of friends, followed developers, and what you have on your wishlist.

Each hub starts with big, detailed recommendations
The carousel at the top of the page will show you games recommended for you, along with helpful metadata about why that game might be relevant for you.



Tailored with carefully picked categories
Our broadest hubs offer tabs to quickly drill down by logical themes and sub-genres. Each one is hand-built to showcase the most logical sub-categories for each hub. For example, you can find your way to just the Open World RPGs and Controller-Friendly Casual Games. Or some hubs are broken down by subgenre, as on this Real-time tab of our Strategy hub and this Arcade section of the Sports & Racing hub.

New For You: Surfacing recommended new releases and new games from followed devs
Each hub will recommend games based on what you've been playing and the developers you follow on Steam. Of course if you are looking at a category of games that you've never played before, Steam may not be able to generate many useful recommendations for you and will hide those sections.



Filter, sort, and find exactly what you're looking for
These hubs each contain a powerful list view that lets you use the filter controls to narrow down to exactly the segment of games you are looking for. We call this feature 'Faceted Browsing' and it also began life as a Steam Labs experiment.



Find recently updated games and games with upcoming events
Every section of the Steam store is now lit up with current events from related titles. Catch a seasonal event, big update, or other interesting news directly from the developers.



Keep an eye on what's next
The new hubs end with a dedicated section showcasing upcoming releases. Pre-purchase or wishlist anticipated titles to be notified as soon as they're released.


Finding Hubs Is Easy
Click on an individual tag from any game's store page and you'll find the hub for that tag. You can also easily discover the most popular hubs, or the hubs recommended for you right from the Steam store homepage.

Your Recommended Hubs
We've also added a new way to jump right into one of your favorite categories right from this colorful carousel on the Steam homepage. This section will recommend categories based on the games you've recently been playing so you can explore more similar games. Or you can always scroll to find some other categories that you maybe haven't played in a while.



Explore Popular Hubs
You can access the most popular destinations by hitting the "Categories" drop-down at the top of the Steam store.



About Steam Labs
Launched in July 2019, Steam Labs is a place where experimental new features can be introduced early in development, tested, and developed in conjunction with the community. For more information, please visit https://store.steampowered.com/labs/
Steam News - andrewl624


Returning to our monthly release series, we're happy to announce Steam's Top Releases for July. As always, we look at every release for the month, highlighting the Top 20 games and Top 5 DLC releases based on the first two weeks of revenue. We also highlight the top 5 free-to-play games, ranked by the number of unique players they acquired after launch.

The Top Releases of July 2022

24/7 Development
Players connect to Steam from nearly every time zone and country imaginable, so it's no surprise that Top Releases also come from development studios around the world. This developer diversity was on full display in July, as teams based in 13 different countries earned spots on the Top Release list. Studios from Japan produced more than a quarter of the games this month, with KOEI TECMO and Bandai Namco Entertainment releasing a pair of Top Releases each. Combining a rich game development history with some of the industry's most recognizable franchises, Japanese studios regularly make Top Release appearances. But we were also thrilled this month to see developers from less-populated regions debuting a Top Release for the first time in 2022. With releases from Gummy Cat (Romania) and Ernestas Norvaišas (Lithuania), developers from 32 different countries have now created a Top Release on Steam in 2022.

Release-Sims
July's Top Releases also include an abundance of simulation games. Between farming and colony sims to city building and management games, about half of the titles this month include one of the various sub-tags from the simulation genre. City builder fans need only decide which era they want to bring to life, with choices ranging from the prehistoric Sapiens, to the medieval Clanfolk, all the way up to the industrial Sweet Transit. July's life-sims offer players relaxing yet fantastic slices of day-to-day life, whether tending your giant wombats in the wild Australian outback of Dinkum or helping Hank the Bear run his business in Bear and Breakfast - did we mention both of these games also feature the cute tag. Along with all of these, PowerWash Simulator really splashed its way on the charts in July. Sprayers--err, we mean, players-- are really soaking up the relaxation with Futurlab’s zen-like hit. 

New Devs
As with previous months, we'd also like to congratulate the teams that are releasing their first Steam game. Some of these teams have been making games for a while on other platforms, while others are making their very first commercial game. A big welcome and congrats go out to these development teams on their successful Steam debuts.

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If you'd like to check out previous months, here are more Top Release lists:

Half-Life 2 - Valve
An update has been released for Half-Life 2 and its Episodes.

- Fixed UI scaling issues when docking the Steam Deck
- Fixed broken control states when external controllers are connected
Steam News - EmilyK
Today we’re starting a limited beta of the updated Steam Mobile App. We’ve rebuilt the app on a new framework and modernized the design. (2015 called and wanted their app back.) You’ll still be able to browse the store, get Steam Guard codes, and confirm trades, but now the app comes with QR code sign in, smarter notifications, an improved Library, and multi account support.

Why are you doing a beta? The sooner we get your feedback on a product, the better. So when we’re far enough along, we ask invested Steam users to try something out and provide feedback. This helps us test our assumptions, learn what you like and don’t like, and find things that need to be fixed. This is especially important when the app can be used on so many different phones and devices.

Who should join the beta? You should join the beta if you already use the Steam Mobile App and you’re willing to provide your feedback on the update. Join this Steam group for instructions on how to install the update and how to tell us what you think. Per Apple guidelines: iOS participants will be limited to 10,000 and will need to install TestFlight.

What if I can’t join the beta? If the beta slots are full, you can still join the group and chime in. We’d like to hear from you!

What’s coming next? We’ll continue adding people to the beta and improving features until we’re ready to push the update out to everyone.
Steam News - saml
Note: This update was re-released on August 30 with the following change: Reduced network usage at startup.
Note: This update was re-released on August 19 to fix an issue with Steam Chat window handling.

Steam Library
  • Fixed library crash when opening certain game news items
  • Fixed a library pause when a new screenshot is taken for a game with a large number of screenshots

Steam Cloud
  • Fixed persistent “Steam Cloud out of date” message for some apps which do not have Steam Cloud fully enabled

Steam Input
  • Improved support for the Nintendo Online classic controllers
  • Added support for Nintendo Joy-Con controllers, both individually as a mini-gamepad and combined into pairs

Remote Play
  • Fixed a rare freeze when using the on-screen keyboard in the controller overlay
  • Fixed left and right thumbstick movement leaking through to the remote side when using a PS4 controller in the controller overlay
Client Update - Valve
Note: This update was re-released on August 30 with the following change: Reduced network usage at startup.
Note: This update was re-released on August 19 to fix an issue with Steam Chat window handling.

A new Steam client has been released and will be automatically downloaded.

Steam Library
  • Fixed library crash when opening certain game news items
  • Fixed a library pause when a new screenshot is taken for a game with a large number of screenshots


Steam Cloud
  • Fixed persistent “Steam Cloud out of date” message for some apps which do not have Steam Cloud fully enabled


Steam Input
  • Improved support for the Nintendo Online classic controllers
  • Added support for Nintendo Joy-Con controllers, both individually as a mini-gamepad and combined into pairs


Remote Play
  • Fixed a rare freeze when using the on-screen keyboard in the controller overlay
  • Fixed left and right thumbstick movement leaking through to the remote side when using a PS4 controller in the controller overlay
Quake Champions - Valve
Quake Champions is Now Available on Steam!

Step into the Arena. Compete against players from around the world in this fast-paced shooter that combines the dark mythos of the original Quake with the skill-based competition of Quake III Arena. Become a Champion.
Team Fortress 2 - Valve
An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

  • Fixed the Spy being able to disguise after picking-up the intelligence
  • Fixed some missing Announcer voice lines during the Competitive post-match summary
  • Fixed some view model draw animations not using the snap command
  • Fixed the Mann vs. Machine mission selection dialog sometimes drawing under the category controls
  • Updated the Cold Cosmos Unusual effect to fix a parenting issue
  • Updated Contagious Eruption, Daydream Eruption, and Volcanic Eruption Unusual effects
    • Fixed the highlight glow detaching itself from the effects and moving in the direction the player is moving
    • Fixed the effects being almost invisible in bright areas
  • Updated the Kazan Karategi to fix clipping issues with the Pyro's arms
  • Updated the Tropical Camo to fix the rigging and the normal map
  • Updated the Boston Brain Bucket and Pest's Pads
    • Added Blank style that was originally missed
    • Fixed style names not aligning with the styles
  • Updated the Bandit's Boots to fix a clipping issue with LOD1
  • Updated The Chaser to fix some clipping issues and correct the backpack icon
  • Updated item schema and localization files with community fixes
  • Updated/Added some tournament medals
...