PC games that rule (by player %) in UK, France, Germany?

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[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.]

Welcome back, and we hope the rest of your week was ‘pleasant’ - or at least not ‘objectionable’. As we slide inexorably towards the weekend, GDCo is busy finishing year-end charts and other data goodness, but has plenty to discuss in the meantime.

Before we start, a book rec for discovery & algo nerds: Glenn McDonald’s ‘You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song’. McDonald created the amazing EveryNoise.com - mapping genres and music artists - and worked at Spotify & Echo Nest on discovery algorithms. (Many parallels to games, here.)

Game discovery news: PS 30th, Indy lead coverage

We’re going to level with you: we collected 20+ stories just since Tuesday for this section. (There’s a lot going on!) Now to jam the info into some skinny jeans:

• Footprints.gg’s ‘trad game media’ weekly charts give us a great look at general vibes, as per usual, with PlayStation’s 30th anniversary getting the most press, followed by the new Indiana Jones game, S.T.AL.K.E.R. 2, Fortnite, Marvel Rivals (see later in newsletter!), Call Of Duty Black Ops 6, and Light of Motiram.

• Steam’s latest latest Next Fest Q&A video reveals >1200 demos registered for Feb. 2025 Next Fest - with sub deadline not until January. The egalitarian new NF style will continue, per Valve, “making it easier for people to browse through many different tags and genres”, as they note the “king making system” of previous Next Fests is over.

• Looking at GDCo’s ‘recent releases’ Switch eShop charts ($, paid, third-party, U.S), MySims Cozy Bundle holds the top position at #9 in all 14-day downloads, with Just Dance 2025 and EA Sports FC 25 following closely behind. Stray continues to perform at #42, and Metroidvania Nine Sols had a decent debut at #103.

• Microlinks: the PC Gaming Show ‘Most Wanted’ did a whole bunch of new/updated game announcing; influencer key distribution tool Woovit is closing down at the end of December; looking back on reveals from The Game Awards that are still MIA - although one just got re-announced at ‘Most Wanted’, haha.

• A notable ‘games are platforms’ update: Starbreeze has announced a deal with Krafton to “bring the heisting experience to a broader audience through PUBG.” So it’ll be a new mode, one presumes. And Starbreeze is keeping the Payday IP, while licensing it to PUBG as a platform & being paid to ‘port’ it. Fascinating…

• Somebody in GDCO’s Plus-exclusive Discord had a Q about the ‘Steam follower to wishlist’ ratios of the Top 250 unreleased Steam games right now. And we replied: “According to our algorithmic estimates, the average follower to wishlist ratio is 13.3x, but it goes as high as 27.8x and as low as 6.7x.” So there!

• Showing the importance of game streaming, “a new report by Midia Research… concluded that gamers typically spend 7.4 hours a week gaming, and 8.5 hours a week watching game-related videos” - and 24% of console/PC players watch game-related content at least monthly.

• After Thronefall’s Jonas Tyroller got a little backlash for his ‘Just Make Great Games’ YouTube video, he invited Chris Zukowski (HowToMarketAGame) to have a more detailed one hour discussion on what sells on Steam. And it’s excellent.

• Non-PC & console microlinks: Nov. 2024’s top-grossing mobile games see the new Pokemon TCG app ($141m) almost unseat Honor Of Kings ($142m); VR game piracy is becoming a problem on the Meta Quest ecosystem; GDCo’s U.S. Apple Arcade charts ($) show Balatro’s AA version at an impressive #3 in Nov, behind only NFL Retro Bowl & NBA 2K25.

• Rumors of Valve making new Steam hardware devices? There are new branding logo templates, including ‘powered by Steam OS’, and info on a leaked ‘Steam Fremont’ hardware device which Brad Lynch thinks could be a new skool ‘Steam Machine’. (Remember those?) File this under ‘nascent but possible’…

• Microlinks: UK regulator OFCOM has its giant 2024 ‘Online Nation’ report out, with 52% of adults playing games (down from 60% in pandemic-y 2021); Fortnite now allows ‘deep linking’ to particular UEFN levels on PC & Android; Amazon Prime Gaming is adding 10 free games linked to its ‘Secret Level’ animated series.

• Finally: we v.recommend this Drew Gooden YouTube video on online gambling, because a) it calls out game streamers for their offshore ‘online casino’ ads, and b) a lot of the best-monetizing games, esp. on mobile, can be ‘gambling-adjacent’. And it’s an important moral Q: are we treating people right, when we get $ from them?

PC games that rule (by player %) in UK, France, Germany?

A few weeks ago, we looked at the games with >100k Steam copies sold that have the highest % of players in the U.S. and Japan. It was a fun look at national niches - from American football and Wizard 101 (U.S.) - to train sims and vTuber games (Japan.)

As we round out the year, we thought we’d go back and grab three more countries to look at - the United Kingdom, Germany and France. To be honest, this is a bit of a ‘novelty’ view, a subset of our more meaningful Steam Deep Dive* ‘Country Explorer’ tool. But it’s fun in a ‘balancing beer mats on your nose’ type way. So let’s do it…

[Steam Deep Dive is part of our enhanced GDCo SaaS data set that companies can license - ping us if interested in learning more!]

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