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- Public data on the Steam tracker, SteamDB, suggests that almost half of this year’s best-performing Steam games are either AA or indie.
- These eight AA projects made their way into the top 20 list of titles that launched this year with the highest concurrent player counts.
- This 40% dominance on the list suggests that players are starting to prefer AA and indie entries over AAA titles on Steam.
The last few years have seen a huge increase in AAA titles with large open worlds and high visual fidelity, but unrealistic budget expectations have started a shift towards AA and indie projects. Now, this year’s statistics from Steam also paint a similar picture.
The public data on the Steam tracker, SteamDB, shows that almost half of this year’s top 20 top-performing Steam titles were either AA or indie instead of AAA titles. In other words, these 40% of games were created by smaller indie teams instead of giant studios.
Why it matters: The large daily player counts suggest that indie games might even surpass the AAA gaming scene in a few years if big studios don’t find a solution.
Manually comparing all the 2025’s top 20 titles with the highest player counts reveals that projects like Schedule 1 (459,798), R.E.P.O. (271,571), and Split Fiction (259,003) were able to outshine many AAA offerings.
Capcom’s AAA Monster Hunter Wilds stole the top spot with 1,384,608 daily players, but it also has a bunch of performance issues. In comparison, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 boasted 256,206 active players, and Bongo Cat (194,508) also dominated the charts.
On the flip side, Assassin’s Creed Shadows only reached 64,825 active players. But the much smaller Rematch (92,841) by Sifu developers easily surpassed that.
Lastly, the well-received Stellar Blade (192,078) did beat some of the smaller indie games in the top 20 list, such as Clair Obscur with 145,063 active players and Sultan’s Game with 46,106 active players.
In the past, statistics also revealed that indie games were earning nearly as much revenue as AAA projects on Steam, as the interest of players continues to turn towards smaller projects.
Do you think the gaming industry is slowly shifting towards preferring AA games over large AAA experiences? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, or join the discussion on the Tech4Gamers forum.
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Shameer Sarfaraz has previously worked for eXputer as a Senior News Writer for several years. Now with Tech4Gamers, he loves to devoutly keep up with the latest gaming and entertainment industries. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and years of experience reporting on games. Besides his passion for breaking news stories, Shahmeer loves spending his leisure time farming away in Stardew Valley. VGC, IGN, GameSpot, Game Rant, TheGamer, GamingBolt, The Verge, NME, Metro, Dot Esports, GameByte, Kotaku Australia, PC Gamer, and more have cited his articles.
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