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.
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So more than half is AAA.
Yeah, as bad as price trends are in the gaming industry, the fact that we’re not headed for huge AAA monopolies is giving me some hope.
A lot of the indie games have gathered massive audiences due to streamers playing them… and then lost most of their players after people moved on to the next trendy indie game.
> 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. occupying two of the top three spots, and Peak falling just outside the top ten. While these games typically have a shorter shelf-life, as they’re quickly replaced by the next viral hit, they’re very much the definition of indie.
> While Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Rematch all had slightly larger scopes, budgets, publishers and teams, all three games fall into the smaller double-A category, taking the fifth, ninth, and 14th spots, respectively. These eight games make up 40 percent of Steam’s top 20 concurrent player counts from titles released this year.
An advantage of AA and indie games is that they often run fine on moderate hardware and tend to be cheaper, too, which is a benefit when people have to watch their expenses more. Pair that with new and fresh ideas, and you have winners.
Expedition 33 also didn’t release at $60-80, but it was $50 and had a launch discount.
Let’s be honest for years now most of the best work has come out of smaller studios.
The few exceptions like Elden Ring, BG 3 are still from studios that would be at best medium sized.
The likes of Ubisoft, Activision/Blizzard etc. haven’t produced anything good in long time.
Yes almost like theres more indie and AA games than AAA games.
I had to check if your title was a real headline, the second sentence is completely redundant.
REALLY? Buying games supports the game studio that made the game?!
r/MadeMeSmile
Honestly if it wasn’t for indie games I’d probably only play like 1 or 2 games a year. That’s where all the creativity is, IMO.
Most big publishers have too much financial investment to make something truly new.
70 dollars a game just too much for me，I can buy like 3 or 4 great indie games for that price.
That’s actually a pretty significant margin. Gamers are clearly making smarter choices, especially considering how AAA games have been launching unoptimized, buggy, filled with microtransactions, and priced higher than ever. On top of that, some developers even blame gamers for poor sales or negative reception. Supporting indies genuinely feels like the better path forward.
A lot of the triple A studios lost touch with gamers. Veilgaurd is a perfect example.
With rising prices of AAA games it’s more than likely just because you can spend $15 on these games, have a lot of fun with friends for quite a few hours and then move on to the next one. It’s not really a trend, we see a revival of older games during quieter times of the year (Star Wars Battlefront 2 for example) and then the holiday seasons coming up are full of new releases it’s just the cycle of everything and it’s just that indie developers are thrust into the spotlight more often because people like underdog stories.
Most of my library is indie games. They put all their heart in. And now we even got an indie game on the top of the charts! Stardew Valley. That guy made a ton of money but did not stop adding content. Passion!
Im glad peak is doing well, I want crab souls 2
We saw some of this in the previous years too with the likes of Valheim and Palworld. I am sure there are other examples, but the common theme here is fun. The devs focused on it and delivered. AAA studios focus on profits. Their games now feel like industrial machines made to squeeze dollars from players. We see this, we feel it. We’ll engage with it if there is nothing else but to the vast majority of us… it isn’t what we want.
Indie devs understand because they are still gamers for the most part.
Well beyond the fact AAA is generally fucked with way more L’s than win’s the overall amount compared to AA/indie is also small.
I personally do not remember a gen were AAA has cancelled more games than released that includes ones like babalyons fall or concord that came out then was canceled heck redfall were is the paid dlc ms?
Toss in the dead AAA live service titles as-well even mortal kombat is basically dead or heck multiversus that was a money burning pile.
This is also a generation were there is no pile of exclusive console games let alone just games from sony/xbox to me its there smallest offerings yet of new titles i am not putting the remasters in that pile.
5 going into 6 years sense ps5/series x launched we got what 7 maybe 9? good games from them? by that i mean 8’s/9’s out of ten correct me if i am wrong.
classic gamer bro new reporting cherry picking.
Time to take the other 50%
This is also just on Steam.
AAA games often have their own launchers where they won’t show up in these stats whereas Double-A or Indie studios definitely have Steam stores as nobody will care them if they have their own launchers.
For example, CoD is available on Steam, yes, but also on gamepass and Xbox app, similar thing for example, EA games/Ubisoft games/etc.
I’m sure the stat when you consider all of this across all platforms is probably that 60~70% of top selling games are AAA.
And very obvious reason for that is: Marketing works.
Even the non-AAA games that go viral often go due to streamers (which is often part of intentional marketing).
I just picked up Look Outside for $10. It’s an indite survival horror RPG that looks inspired by Earthbound.
Make fun game. People buy game.
There’s also something that you need to take into account. A lot of big AAA games publishers deliberately avoided releasing games this summer because they had expected GTA6 to come out and wanted to avoid releasing around the same time, leaving a fairly conspicuous drought of big game game releases.
What were the last big AAA games that have been released this year? Death Stranding 2 and Nightreign, both from JP studios, not much in the way of western Triple A games.
Yh as the years go by, the triple A gaming sector is dying, whilst the others are coming up with really fun games and concepts.
Not sure if there will be another crash like the mid to late 80’s but it’s something of a bloated medium for sure.
Because they’re the only ones making fun games.
The majority of Trip A are live service, lootbox, and season pass delivery mechanisms with a game facade stapled to the front end.
I am supporting games which are fun and interesting. Seems like dropping random paid outfits into you generic AAA world is neither of both.
Or it’s because AAA games haven’t evolved in a decade.
Star Wars Battlefront 2 is one of the most popular games at ffs
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. These days all the best games are made by people who grew up playing games and are now spawning little companies to make the games they always wanted as kids, so now you see a giant boost of both quality and quantity overall amongst all of the corporate trash
Well yea…. How many 80 dollar games do you think the average gamer is going to buy a year? Maybe 1 or 2.
Who knew that people would rather buy a game for $15 rather then $80
It’s been downhill for a looooooong time for gaming.
The last year’s GOTY winner is Astro Bot which is the biggest red flags of all time.
There is not a single gaming studio that can deliver half a decent game lately and games like Schedule 1 trying to fill that gap with meaningless boring ass game loop.
Not to mention, UE5 being a dumpster fire also not helping the situation and the only game with a decent engine is exclusive to PS5 (Death Stranding 2).
How does it compare to last years I wonder. The growth of smaller and indie games this year to the past years. I think maybe that would been neat thing to know other than just how 2025 been.
I think publishers and to an extent even gaming media really underplay underestimate how much people are not willing to pay $70 to $80 dollars for a game these days. I’m pretty sure the rise in indie is a direct result of that.
Pffffft they forgot Garten of banban
I’m just turned off by the modern monetization techniques. Screw all that idiocy. Sell me the game, let me play it without trying to get into my wallet every time I fire the game up.
My view is that Triple A companies simply got out of touch with gamers or what gamers want.
Under this aspect you can name probably many misconceptions. 2 examples:
“bigger/more is better attempts”. Just because a game world is way bigger than the one of it’s predecessor doesn’t mean it’s better. If you simply spread the interesting stuff it’s just wasted walk/drive/ride time. I also don’t need an assassins creed with 150 hours for a completionist run it’s rather a reason not to buy for me. I want to play. Not to work. Just take a look at the recent Subnautica 2 topic. The original founders sold in 2021 because they wanted a) money for their shares and b) funding for a way bigger game.
Other things like introducing mechanics or modes people don’t want like BF2042 with it’s extraction mode while people simply want a state of the art BF that reminds them of BF3/4. Now BF6 comes around the corner and again some type of battle royal mode is rumored to be the focus. Again the same mistake? Make a proper battlefield with battlefield modes and see how the money flows.
With some exceptions, the market has been flooded with those games that appeal to twitch streams. Funny meme-able, coop games. I dont know what this genre is called. But games that are ment to be fun watching. That doesn’t mean these are bad games or not enjoyable by playing. Alot of them are actually extremly fun and good games for value, but its pretty obvious they were ment for streamers.