Topping the Valve Steam’s best of 2020 list are the usual suspects, like Destiny 2, Counter-Strike, Grand Theft Auto 5 and Terraria, but there are a surprising number of new releases like Between Us and Cyberpunk 2077 that were released just a few weeks ago.
Like clockwork each year, Valve launches its list of the most played games of the year on Steam – sorted by how many simultaneous players each game had.
Each of these games had more than 200,000 simultaneous players at its peak, with Cyberpunk 2077 reaching a record 1,054,388 players on December 12.
While you can certainly look at the lists of the best games of the year (including our list of Games of the Year 2020) to find out what was new and hot in 2020, bestseller lists like the one Steam provides each year give us the clearer picture of what players have been buying and playing in recent months.
Here is a complete list of the 10 most played games:
- Destiny 2
- Among us
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Life is strange 2
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Mount and blade 2: Lord of the flag
- DOTA 2
- PlayerUnknown’s battlegrounds
- Monster Hunter World
- Terraria
Looking for multiplayer matches and extra content? Look no further
Sales data is interesting in itself, but it can give us a bigger picture – for example, the number of simultaneous players is a good indicator of active online communities and the more active an online community is, the easier it will be to find them matches multiplayer.
Looking at the list, all but one game was released over a year ago – that is, although this is a list of the most played games of 2020, players are still playing older games. Because? Well, some of these games are free, others are reasonably cheap, but they all offer a fair amount of content to explore.
Take, for example, Grand Theft Auto 5 which remains popular seven years after its initial release thanks to updates and new content Grand Theft Auto Online, or Destiny 2 which has many multiplayer modes.
What is the moral here? If you need something new to play and want it to last a while, Steam’s list of the most popular ones can be a good place to start looking – even if it looks like most games are a few years old.
- Looking for something new to play? Don’t miss our guide to the best PC games