2025 feels like a bit of a tipping point for gaming. As bigger studios continue to cancel projects and lay off talented developers, or see their trend-chasing games fail, smaller games have come to the limelight. Indie titles like Schedule 1, R.E.P.O., and Peak have all garnered massive audiences, while games from smaller studios, such as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, have achieved critical acclaim, breaking multiple records in the process.

Expedition 33 might have cracked the formula.

With player and development habits shifting, as 2025 reaches its halfway point, we've looked at the games with the highest player counts on Steam, and have found that 40 percent of the top 20 are either indie or double-A.

According to our data (pulled from SteamDB), eight of this year's top 20 games, sorted by peak concurrent player count, have come from indie studios or can be classified as "double-A".

In the TikTok and short-form video era, a trend has emerged of smaller, more clippable games going viral, which has undoubtedly contributed to this year's charts. We saw it previously with games like Content Warning and Chained Together, and that trend has continued this year, with Schedule I and R.E.P.O....

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