True to form, Valve unveiled a top 100 while remaining vague enough that we could not compose an exact ranking. The games are thus grouped by categories but in disorder, the 40 biggest hits being gathered in the Platinum, Gold and Silver categories. The other 60 games on the list are then scattered around the Bronze category. In any case, note that the success of the games was measured by turnover and not by number of copies sold, which makes more sense if only compared to free-to-play and games-service.
Honor the winners with the Platinum games, a category in which we find many regulars, namely Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Grand Theft Auto V, PUBG, Rainbow Six Siege and Destiny 2. Dead by Daylight is not a new kid either, but his exceptional performance allows him to appear for the first time in the Platinum circle after having hung the Gold two years in a row. The other five games were released on Steam in 2021 and naturally include New World and Valheim, two PC exclusives whose spectacular numbers were widely highlighted at the time of their release. The Amazon Games MMO remains in particular the one that achieved the largest peak in players this year on Steam (913,634). Valheim was approaching 8 million copies sold last August. Call of Duty: Vanguard is only available on Battle.net, Battlefield 2042 will also have held its rank as a big year-end FPS while being slaughtered by player ratings. Quite the opposite of Apex Legends and Naraka: Bladepoint, the little battle royale surprise from China.
Platinum
The Gold category highlights the endurance of games like Rust, Warframe, Final Fantasy XIV, The Elder Scrolls Online as well as the good coexistence of Forza Horizon 4 and Forza Horizon 5, released in March and November respectively on the Valve platform. With 5 million copies sold on Steam since June 2020, Sea of Thieves is still sailing in happiness, too. Among the novelties, It Takes Two and Back 4 Blood highlight the strength of cooperation in different genres.
Gold
The Silver category has for its part five new features with Resident Evil Village, Age of Empires IV, Outriders, Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Halo Infinite which perhaps could have claimed better if it had been released earlier in the year. Monster Hunter World and Ark: Survival Evolved nurture players’ love of big beasts, while Civilization VI, Phasmophobia and Stellaris remind us that the PC also relies on its exclusives.
Silver
Finally, the rest of the top 100 has a number of titles released in 2021 like Farming Simulator 22, Biomutant, Nioh 2, Tales of Arise, Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis, Humankind, Guilty Gear: Strive, Days Gone and NieR Replicant. . In addition, Valve also offers a ranking based on the largest number of people in the game simultaneously or a ranking of the biggest successes in virtual reality. Without being able to count on Oculus Studios productions, the so-called Into the Radius is the only novelty that has been able to find a place in the Platinum category.
Microsoft’s triumph as the power of PC gaming
We have already had the opportunity to highlight it, but this year 2021 marks a turning point for Xbox Game Studios, which is now one of the big names in PC gaming. This finding is more easily noticeable when we look at the ranking of the best new products released in 2021 also provided by Valve. Halo Infinite, Age of Empires IV, Forza Horizon 5 (and Deathloop to a lesser extent) add to the successes already experienced by Halo: The Master Chief Collection, State of Decay 2, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Grounded, Sea of Thieves, Microsoft Flight Simulator and Forza Horizon 4. If we add to that the large licenses of Bethesda (The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DOOM), we better understand the place that Microsoft now occupies in the gaming landscape. PC video.
On the PlayStation side, Days Gone made its debut on PC by ranking among the 25 biggest novelties of the year, without generating as much attention as Horizon Zero Dawn in 2020 (as on console, at the same time). . While the manufacturer is still unable to deliver as many PlayStation 5s as it needs to be, something tells us that God of War and Uncharted may not be the only PlayStation games we see coming to the market. PC in 2022.
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