Like a true patient gamer I didn’t play a single game from 2025.
Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases
Submitted 3 weeks ago by mcforest@feddit.org to patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
Comments
mcforest@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Quazatron@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Respect.
TheBat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Same.
Which makes sense because I didn’t even buy a game released in 2025
LORDSMEGMA@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Makes sense, most games were released before 2025
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
New games are expensive and the all those UE5 games run like crap, cause I can’t afford high end hardware either. Of course I’ll just play old games.
foggianism@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I was just about to invest in a high-end PC when the RAM prices started to go crazy. I’ll wait it out. My PS5 is gonna make it easier for me to wait.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Wait for a PS6 that Sony will sell at a loss due to earning it back on games and salvage that sweet sweet ram and GPU for a home made PC lol.
Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Hopefully the gabecube will be affordable and able to run a lot well.
BilSabab@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Expensive and on top of that - there’s million different editions with different content and you get this long list of options and it just kills whatever interest you had in buying that thing because this is just obnoxious.
chunes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Unity and Godot also run like crap for me.
Whenever someone just uses SDL or something, I’m all over it.
vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I have a gtx 1080. 2025 games are mostly written in unreal 5. Unreal 5 is designed such that not even the highest end gpus can actually run it without framegen. And now also with mandatory raytracing.
Older games still work, and they look and run better for me.
BilSabab@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And most U5 games look kinda the same
Aganim@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It does depend on the game, Satisfactory for example uses UE5 (5.3.2) and runs perfectly fine for me without framegen at 5120x1440. Admittedly I run it on an RX 6900, so not an average card. But at the other hand it’s already an older one and that resolution approaches 4K.
Unless something changed fairly recently the game also doesn’t use Lumen by default, let alone raytracing. Was this made mandatory in later UE5 versions? Because it’s definitely not mandatory for every UE5 version.
UE5 is by no means a lightweight engine, but I do wonder how many of the issues are caused by lack of optimisation.
vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
ue5 doesn’t force rt. But the number of games that do mandate rt (ex the latest indiana jones game) is increasing. I flat out can’t play those.
AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I would love to play satisfactory more but it makes my cpu so hot :( and now that RAM prices have tripled or whatever I’m not gonna be upgrading any time soon
Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Fascinatingly, this number can’t even include Fortnite, since it’s not on Steam, and has got to be the elephant in the room in terms of play time going to older games. But that is something to keep in mind when you see stats like this. It’s not all “New releases failing.” A lot of it is “Games have a much longer lifespan now.”
Numbers wise, my top 3 were Helldivers 2, Warframe, and Vampire Survivors, all of which continued to receive content updates throughout 2025. These aren’t old games sitting on a shelf gathering dust that I went and unearthed. They’re in their prime. Warframe released a huge update specifically to coincide with the Game Awards, with a trailer featuring Werner Herzog. They’ve never been a bigger deal. Helldivers had their single biggest in-game event this year. I’ve also been spending a lot of time with Rogue Trader (just got a big patch) and Dark Tide (got two new classes and a lot of new maps added this year). Ready or Not and Insurgency also got content updates this year.
So, yeah, peeling people away from an existing title is a much slower process now. Games no longer land like a meteor. The real successes creep up.
This is not to say that there hasn’t been an absolute dearth of worthwhile content from the big studios. You’ll notice that every single thing I listed there is, by at least some definition, an indie game. Helldivers 2 has a big publisher in Sony, but Arrowhead were hardly a major or well known developer. Other than that, it’s all outside of the traditional publisher system. And that’s frankly a good and healthy thing. We’re seeing guys like Larian and Sandfall, Arrowhead, DE, Owlcat, Fat Shark, NetEase, Team Cherry, Super Giant, all just absolutely crushing it, and that’s genuinely fantastic news for the medium.
It’s weird how people look at the failures of Ubisoft and EA and act like this is a bad time to be a gamer. This is one of the best times there’s ever been to be a gamer. The medium hasn’t been this healthy since the glory days of the mid-nineties, and I say that as one of the old farts who grew up in those glory days. Sandfall made Clair Obscur with a team of 60, and it’s incredible. Owlcat made Rogue Trader for basically nothing in a shed and it’s one of the best RPGs you’ll ever play. Vampire Survivors had a budget of like three french fries and some pocket lint and it’s one of the most addictive gaming experiences ever. Balatro was like one guy and it absolutely blew up the world. The fact that we’re getting games this fucking good from outside of the big name publishers is genuinely amazing. I remember the mid 2000s when indie gaming was dead in a ditch, PC gaming was just nothing but console ports, and the only stuff we got was the endless drivel the major publishers shovelled out. Yeah, there were good releases sprinkled in there, but for the most part creativity and imagination were absolutely dead. Now we get stuff like Valheim, Stardew Valley, Project Zomboid, Space Marine 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Lethal Company, Among Us, Speed Freeks, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, Escape from Tarkov, Shadows of Doubt, Hades 2, Forever Winter… And yeah, some of that stuff is janky or buggy or messy, but it’s inventive and cool and slick and all of it is coming from outside of the big names.
psoul@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My method of patient gaming is to only buy games that are $10 or less
Just got subnautica, hades 1, disco Elysium, oxygen not included, hollow knight (I’m sad to learn I don’t like platformers that much…), kerbal space program.
Shit, I have so much to play for the next 5 years just there.
Factorio and Hades 2 were my exceptions, got them full price.
BilSabab@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
THAT. That’s the spirit!
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Got yesterday Tomb Raider pack for 5.60. Only because Tomb Raider 2013 was already in my catalog (that I probably bought also for less than 4 dollars) Still have plenty of games there that I’ve never played. Cant wait when me and my wife finish It Takes Two to move to Stardew Valley couch co-op.
BilSabab@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I kinda gave up buying new stuff because of all the editions bullshit. Complete, Deluxe, Gold, Ultimate, Season Pass, Whatever The Fuck Else Special Director’s Cut - yeah, yo ho ho ho your capitalist ass straight to the fire sell.
Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Same here, game on sale for $3, but then I see it had $200 in DLC to play the complete game. Major turn off.
BilSabab@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
hitman 3 is fucking ridiculous. it’s a great game, I love it, but for the love of God just release it in one piece and kill the online mode
sunbytes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Literally just had that same thing with Icarus while I was looking at the winter sale. I went to reviews to find the catch for the game and people were saying the base game is pretty just a big demo.
vega208@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Yeah, it dawned on me a few years ago that games are being sold in an unfinished state just so they can sell us the rest later.
If you’re still naive enough to spend money on things you can be getting for free (just to make someone else richer), at least wait until what you’re buying is complete.
BilSabab@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
yeah, i don’t mind DLC being sold separately, especially when it’s a full-fledged expansion like a good old add-on - not just an extra mission and stuff - proper 5-10 extra hours. But when you get this impossible to follow selection of options - it annoys the hell out of me and i switch to something that has only one package and doesn’t require market analysis skills to figure out the best version to buy. Or just yo ho ho fuck’em all instead because that’s what happens.
Katana314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I definitely see much of AAA gaming as greedy, but when I’ve dipped into it this never seemed like an accurate take. The shit they’re selling for Ultimate Editions is normally teensy and inconsequential, like a golden gun or something. They’re selling to sons of Dubai warlords that just have Fuck You money to spend. I’ve never regretted getting a standard edition, except when I buy Deluxe off an indie game where I just want to support them (For reference, Expedition 33 had a Deluxe Edition)
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Outside of a few exceptions, older games are ironically more novel and have more interesting gameplay.
And practically no one can actually afford the super duper premium Nvidia prices required to make an unoptimized UE5 engine game actually run well.
… Half of the gaming market in general is gacha games on mobile phones.
Most permaonline ‘hardcore’ gamers, people you ou see on game related discussion forums, as well as industry marketing execs, and yes, both pay for play gaming ‘journalists’, and most of your favorite youtube/twitch game opinion havers… they’re all delusionally out of touch with the basic economic reality most gamers are in.
This is why things like Stop Killing Games are important.
Publishers know that existing games are their primary competition, thats why they want them to be unplayable.
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
The performance issues are a major one for me, nothing worse than firing up a new game and getting 40fps with tons of stuttering along the way.
I feel like most newer games also have trouble with low/medium settings not really being that much better for performance, so there’s no fix for it.
I remember older games where low was like staring at a character made from 12 polygons and everything looked awful, but it would run on just about anything.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Its because many game studios just started making many games that just assume you have some kind of raytracing capable GPU.
They largely stopped bothering to properly support and properly optimize for the hardware situations where you don’t.
A whole bunch of post processing and even just basic scene rendering?
Yeah, they’re now done in kinds of render pipelines that more or less blow up or chug without cards that have at least some ray tracing support, even if you actually have all your in game settings down to as low as possible.
Its hard to set up lights and bake light maps and such in the old fashioned way, its easy to just let the engine handle all of that for you as a dev, auto magically.
Problem is, very few dev teams actually know how to use UE5 properly, and I don’t blame them, it is absurdly complex.
Threat Interactive on youtube more or less has hours of extremely technical breakdowns of UE5 shennanigannery, and also comparisons to somewhat niche techniques used by select, older games, that are as, nearly as, or sometimes actually just better than many UE5 games at realistic high fidelity graphics… while also being more performant, running on older hardware.
Its exceedingly technical and complicated, but the upshot is: No, you’re not crazy, these idiots are often intentionally, often unintentionally, doing things in stupid ways, unnecessary ways.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Tim Cain (the lead on the original Fallout and a long time programmer) talked about his experience being a programmer for hire at a major studio later in his career. It as a culture shock for him to see younger programmers basically doing no optimization. When he talked to them about it the attitude was basically that it wasn’t worth the time to do, since none of the higher ups cared about it, and the programmers could easily get whatever they assignment was done with bloated, unoptimized code. There wasn’t any experience in optimizing or a culture of doing it.
ngdev@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
to your GTA 6 point: i will not be buying it until it releases on pc. rumor is, and history agrees, that it will be a console only release for like a year. and even then im gonna borrow it first to see if its worth a shit before paying a dime. and i might not pay even if i do like it lol
caut_R@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I played like three games from this year. PEAK, MH Wilds, MK World.
The joy of playing older games is that they run well since they‘ve had years of patches and there‘s been years of faster hardware to power through most of the lack of optimization. And they‘re about a quarter the price. For running four times worse, new games also certainly don‘t look four times better.
ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
The only new game ive played this year is Ball X Pit and it is phenomenal and runs flawlessly for a game that is less than 3 months from release. I hope they keep adding onto it
caut_R@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Should‘ve probably clarified that I was talking about AAA games, the big budget big asking price kind of. Indie games usually run great.
jaykrown@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The gaming industry for new games being released is brutal. The competition is sky high, and all you need to think about are games like Stardew Valley or Skyrim. There are so many options to choose from, a new young gamer has barely any reason to pay full price for any new games. We are entering the “Please play out game! It’s free!” phase, and still no one will spend the time. Time and attention are the most valuable thing.
AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
“PAY attention” “How do you like to SPEND your time”
Those phrases don’t prove much but if more people viewed their time and attention as commodities… idk… they might chose to “invest” them in other things.
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Which probably only proves that Steam Machines is going to be more than enough for everyone.
balderdash9@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Patient gamer chiming in. I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time and loving it. No bugs, a great expansion, and paid $20. For single player games the backlog keeps me a few years behind and the cycle continues.
Sophocles@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Same, 80% of my gaming was on older releases. The only game I played released in 2025 was an indie TD game called Dungeon Warfare III, mostly because I played and loved I and II.
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 3 weeks ago
Dungeon Warfare is a great tower defense series, just like you i can only recommend it - haven’t tried the third one yet tho.
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Count me in. The only 2025 game I got is THPS3+4 which is a remaster of a 2 decade old game(s). The only reason I got this game is because I was a hardcore fan of THPS series and my favorite one was 3 on PC.
HornedMeatBeast@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I had some financial troubles recently, so I have not been buying any AAA games for over a year but I have bought some new little games here and there like Peak or some free to play games so my new release percentage is 22%
54% is 1 to 7 year old games.
24% is 8 years or older.
Still rocking Elite Dangerous.
Stupendous@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I do buy new games even full price on rare occasion. Regardless of that, there’s nothing new games do much better than old games besides graphics and that mattering declined hard once league of legends, counter strike, fortnite, minecraft, roblox, etc became people’s childhood to their ongoing adulthood games. I’ve met people that haven’t spent a dime on genshin impact while having played for 5 years
No one is missing out on the best 2025 games if they’re playing the best games of 2015. Time is finite and if it’s filled with good, what difference does it make if it’s new or old. You’re not missing out if you’re playing the best games of 2000-2014 in 2025.
I follow emulation on Android communities and people love playing the greatest hits of the PS2, Gamecube, DS, 3DS, PSP, Vita and it seems to mostly be teenagers. And now we’re getting good PC emulation support and PS3 and X360 support is progressing. Switch on Android emulation is pretty good now. Android, Steam Machine, Steam Deck, Steam Frame, Legion Go, Rog Ally, GPD Win, Ayaneo. Even Switch 2. The relatively low power gaming scene is growing and that bodes well for “classic/retro/oldies” gaming.
It’s been 12 years since the PS4 launched. Early PS4 games don’t play much different than 2025 games. The classics oldie radio station of games are soon going to be very modern. 2007 Bioshock era games are already very modern and look pretty good too
Janx@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
According to Metacritic, there were only eight 9/10 or better games this year. Or two, if you ignore remakes, remasters, and sequels. Maybe the issue is a drop in quality this year…?
https://www.metacritic.com/browse/game/all/all/current-year/
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
People with massive backlogs: aw yeah, it’s all coming together
saimen@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Wait there are new games coming out still? I thought everyone was just working on their pile of shame.
Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I mean, Clair Obscur and Silksong both came out this year, and they’re fantastic.
But if we’re talking triple A stuff? Uh… Not a clue. I wanna say there was a Battlefield game?
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I believe COD BO7 was released. Not much I heard about it. I recall people being disappointed. Something something 4h single player campaign.
filister@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It doesn’t help also that new GPUs and now even disk drives and RAMs are ridiculously expensive.
I am sure the end goal of corpos is to turn this into another subscription service.
Pacattack57@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
People don’t buy new games anymore because they often release incomplete. Why would I buy a game that is offering only 25% of its content. I’ll wait for it to be don’t and buy it at a discount in a year. Thanks
Leomas@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There were a lot of great fucking indie games released this year, from the comments a bunch of people here have missed some great indie games.
deus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Hades II, Silksong, Blue Prince, Ball x Pit, Mandragora, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, Citizen Sleeper 2, Dispatch, Absolum, Megabonk, Constance, Wheel World, Cloverpit, that’s only a fraction of this year’s releases and I’m not even counting the more ambitious titles like The Alters and Expedition 33. Indie fans have been eating good for sure.
Leomas@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
From the list I only own Silksong, Megabonk, and Expedition 33, I know about, but do not own and have not played Hades II, but I would still have a bunch of 2025 indie games I really liked. (The Wandering Village is an example from the country I live in even).
b000rg@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Don’t forget the one that SHOULD HAVE gotten GOTY: Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
kbal@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
I wonder how much was for 2011 releases because apparently 86% of my time in Steam games this year was in Skyrim.
DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mostly play PS3 games on RPCS3. Very few newer games are my taste.
xtools@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
ps2-ps3 is my go-to era too. i go back to my RGH’d xbox360 equipped with an external 1tb hdd more often than the ps4 or steam
Wigglesworth@retrolemmy.com 2 weeks ago
I’m doing a Metroid Prime trilogy run through using Primehack. The retro is real.
Dojan@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
I think I bought one game from 2025 this year. Two-Point Museum. Great value. I’ve had a blast with it.
I’ve no idea what AAA releases have come out this year, and I don’t particularly care. They tend to be garbage anyway.
dukemirage@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not surprising
southernbrewer@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Haven’t played a single game from 2025. I don’t even think I saw any that caught my eye tbh.
Oh no i lie - World of goo 2 is definitely on my wishlist. Maybe next year though, I’m still busy with Satisfactory at the moment
sunbytes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Oh wow Satisfactory is from last year??!
Time flies when you’re building manifolds, I guess.
dangrousperson@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I know this is patient gamers, but this was one of the best years in gaming for a while.
My personal top 3:
Silksong - I played like 2h of Hollow Knight many years ago, then took a small break, but was so lost when I returned that I never touched it again, until Silksong got a release date and the hype made me check it out again. Amazing game and Silksong is even better. I 100% Silksong and I’m super excited for the free DLC next year. I kind of rushed Hollow Knight though, so I might return for some late-game stuff.
DK Bananza - honestly didn’t expect to to enjoy it as much as I did, really fun and creative 3D platformer with some of the best and smoothest movements in any of them.
Expedition 33 - Honestly this was mostly off my radar for m9st of the year. I had heard about it now and then, but the turn based combat didn’t sound appealing to me. When it was nominated for more VGA awards then any game before it, I checked it out as well. Also an absolute banger. Great Art, Story and the turn based combat is a lot more fun than I thought it would be, really in depth to get the most out of each character.
I’m also looking forward to playing metroid prime 4, probably some.time next year
minorkeys@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If they already made all the games we ever need, would they start taking them away just so we have to buy new ones, instead? This is the future of steam when Gabe dies.
kepix@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
at least the legal playtime that is
BilSabab@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
nope, sir, this is piracy-free space. piracy don’t exist. it’s bogus.
InfiniteStruggle@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Next year it is going to be even lower with how prices are going. Upgrades are just not feasible anymore.
ms_lane@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Glad I got a 9070XT just before everything went bust. I’ll be sticking with DDR4 for a few years though.
HouseWolf@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
I’m using 32GB of Corsair DDR4 I got back in 2016. Think I can safely say I got my moneys worth already and still intend to ride it into 2030 at this rate.
Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
The general trend, yes.
But then again, my computer is now many years old (some components more than others) and I’m pretty sure I could play every release from this year on the highest graphic setting (or at least on “high”) without performance issues.
What I’m trying to say is not “my PC is so great” but you you don’t actually need a current-Gen, high end PC to play even recent triple-A titles. Eventually it’ll get too old, but that is a very long time: probably close to a decade or something, if you individually upgrade some things occasionally.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
You are absolutely incorrect. I have a really powerful modern computer, and I can’t do this. Well, I can, just with low framerate or significant upscaling (the latter I would call not the highest settings anyway). I can run them on higher settings usually, but not maxed. Hell, some of the worse performance ones I need to turn down to get a framerate I find acceptable (at least 60 for most games, usually 100+).
I mostly don’t care to play AAA titles anyway though. Not only are they performance hogs usually, I just don’t find them interesting. I’d almost always rather play an indie game that wants to experiment.