Schedule 1 and REPO Just Beat Battlefield in Steam’s 2025 Rankings and Thats Hilarious
Okay so Valve dropped the 2025 best sellers list and I am LIVING for these results.
Schedule 1. REPO. Two indie games made by tiny teams. Both in the Platinum tier alongside Battlefield 6 and Monster Hunter Wilds and Elden Ring Nightreign. Just sitting there with the big boys like they belong. Which they do apparently based on revenue.
Game Rant confirmed both indie titles generated enough money to crack the top 12 highest grossing games on Steam this year. The ENTIRE YEAR. Against games with marketing budgets bigger than some countries GDP.
REPO is a ten dollar game with no DLC. Ten dollars. Alinea Analytics estimates it sold 19.2 million copies through November. At that price making Platinum by REVENUE means an absolutely absurd number of humans bought this thing. Like genuinely wild numbers.
Schedule 1 launched in Early Access back in March and immediately blew up because streamers discovered it. Classic story at this point. Small game gets attention from the right content creators and suddenly its everywhere.
The rest of the Platinum tier is what youd expect mostly. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. Oblivion Remastered because everyone wanted to see Bethesda try again with that engine. Hollow Knight Silksong FINALLY. Civilization 7. EA Sports FC because soccer never dies. Borderlands 4 which had problems but still sold. Dune Awakening. ARC Raiders.
The Gamer pointed out that nine of the top 12 are multiplayer games. Only Silksong, Oblivion, and KCD2 are really single player experiences. And Silksong has a co-op mod so even that barely counts.
Multiplayer ate everything this year. Friendslop or whatever people are calling it. Games where you get on Discord with your buddies and scream at each other for three hours. Thats what sells now apparently.
Monster Hunter Wilds being up there is funny because Digital Foundry called it one of the worst PC ports theyve tested. Runs like hot garbage on most machines. Didnt matter. People WANTED to hunt monsters and they bought it anyway and just complained on Reddit about framerates while putting in 200 hours.
Gold tier has some good stuff. Doom The Dark Ages. Assassins Creed Shadows. Clair Obscur Expedition 33 which I thought would go higher honestly but Gold is still solid. Black Ops 7 despite everyone saying they were tired of annual Call of Duty. Turns out gamers lie about not buying things.
Silksong in Platinum for new releases based on first two weeks but only Silver for overall top sellers is interesting. Means HUGE launch followed by basically nothing. Everyone who wanted it bought it day one. No legs whatsoever.
Also Left 4 Dead 2 is somehow STILL in Platinum for most played. A game from 2009. Sixteen years old. Just hanging out. Valve please for the love of god make a third one. Or anything with a 3. Half Life 3. Portal 3. Just… something.
The indie success stories are the real takeaway here though. You dont need 500 million dollars and three studios and a marketing blitz that takes over Times Square. You need a good game and the right streamer to notice it.
Small teams can compete. Thats the lesson. Schedule 1 and REPO proved it.
List gets updated January 15th with December numbers so things might shift around a bit. But the story of 2025 on Steam is already written. Multiplayer dominates. Streaming makes hits. And two indie games just embarrassed some very expensive productions.
You love to see it honestly.
