Steam reveals most-played and highest-selling games of 2023

Steam has released the Best Of 2023 catalog, which lists the top free-to-play and paid games on the platform last year based on various factors, including gross revenue, peak concurrent players, and daily active players, on the grounds of data it collected from January 1, 2023, to December 15, 2023. The company has grouped these titles into seven categories: Top Sellers, New Releases, Most Played, Early Access, Steam Deck, Controller, and VR. These categories have anywhere from two to four tiers, including Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Let’s take a look at the titles that dominated sales and the ones that people played the most last year.

Top-selling games in 2023

Starting with Top Sellers, Dota 2 topped the chart, followed by Apex Legends, both of which are free-to-play games. In the third position is Baldur’s Gate 3, which is the first paid game on the list. That doesn’t come as a surprise considering that it was not only acclaimed by experts but also won the Game of the Year award last year. Call of Duty Modern Warfare III, despite poor reviews, made it to the fourth position, which shows the popularity of this series. Destiny 2 came in 5th. Cyberpunk 2077, despite a shaky start, managed to grab the 6th position.

Most played games in 2023

Coming to Most Played games, Sons of the Forest, Destiny 2, and Starfield took the first, second, and third positions respectively, with over 300,000 peak player count. PUBG: Battlegrounds, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Hogwarts Legacy took the next three positions, and these titles too had over 300,000 peak players. As for games that rocked on Steam Deck, The Witcher Wild Hunt topped the charts, followed by Resident Evil 4, Half-Life, Baldur’s Gate 3, Dave The Diver, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, GTA V, and Starfield, which shows that people aren't afraid of playing graphics-intensive games on the console at the cost of frame rate and graphics quality.

Big discounts on popular games at the Steam Winter Sale

You can check out the entire list on Steam’s website, and while you are at it, you might want to consider adding new games to your library as Valve is offering massive discounts on many titles on Steam on the occasion of Steam Winter Sale 2023, which is live till January 4, 2024 (10:00 AM Pacific Time). So, grab the deals before they are gone.