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Steam Charts: Variation Edition!

ALL CHANGE AT THE STEAM CHARTS

Sorry to frighten the more sensitive reader, but, goodness me, among the miserably common entries, this week's chart welcomes a fair few newbies and indies! Are customers about to get better at buying? Or will we just see these games in the charts every week for the rest of the year? STAY TUNED!

9. Slay The Spire

Adam's favourite deck-based game sneaks its way into the charts this week, and rather splendidly there's no special reason why. It's just getting more popular! The early access card-led roguelite has weekly updates, but that's nothing new, and there's been no price discount recently.

Perhaps someone who isn't me, and didn't murder that mysterious crone's dog in a car accident, and hasn't been cursed to write the Steam Charts every week for the rest of their unnatural life, doesn't find this quite so interesting. But for me it's quite the treat to see a game get popular by selling regularly priced copies to an ever larger audience. This is my life now. Send help.

8. Northgard

Northgard can make no such boasts. It just cheated. By lowering its price by about 25% last week. The cads. They didn't even add an interesting new update. They just sat back and said, "MARKET FORCES, FILL OUR POCKETS WITH GOLD!" And you idiots fell for it.

Anyway, so yes, two nice decent indie games in a row to start us off!

7 & 10. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege

You may have been wondering what happened to #10 this week? Well, it slipped. Tom Clancy's ghostly form continues to make updates for Siege, as it enters its third year of quite incredible success. "OoooOOOooooOooo!" he said to the team, "DepploooOOOooy the Mid-Season Reinforcements updaaaaAAAaaate." And so they did, off the back of some tidy sales during the holidays.

In fact, it's the game itself that was at #10, while the Year 3 season pass gets the #7 slot. And what's in that? I haven't a sodding clue. Honestly, I just read about it on Steam, and it's impenetrable. Just reams and reams of guff about operations and skins and a "0.3% Alpha Pack Boost". What merry hell is this, where the game's vocabulary has become unfathomable to outsiders? I promise I'm not making it up when I say it contains these words:

"If you missed the Year 2 Pass, don’t worry! You can still get the 8 Y2 operators in the Year 2 Operators bundle, available in the in-game shop for 2400 R6 Credits."

6. Grand Theft Auto V

A new series to fill the gruesome space beneath the wearyingly inevitable appearance of this 400 year old game: What's Another Thing You Could Buy Instead Of GTA V Again?

What's Another Thing You Could Buy Instead Of GTA V Again?

This bouquet of plush unicorns.

5. Divinity: Original Sin 2

Remember when I said DOS2 would drop out of the charts for the foreseeable unless they had the sense to lower their prices? Well, I SHOWED THEM, EH? Showed them how I'm a stupid wrong idiot.

I'm really delighted to be wrong. DOS2 is one of the best games in the last forty-twelve squillion years, and I love that just its innate brilliance alone is enough to see it trotting back into the charts. I also love that they've priced it at £30, and not the current grim trend to push this up to £40/£50, excluding vast swathes of their potential audience who can't afford to spend a week's food shopping on a single game.

4. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

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3. Human Fall Flat

Look at this! We solved the mystery from last week, about how this quite decent physics puzzler from two years ago is suddenly flying off the shelves - they added multiplayer. And apparently what everyone was waiting for was multiplayer Human Fall Flat. Getting to #3 is amazing, and what a wonderful belated win for developers No Brakes Games.

Honestly, I'm not sure why they didn't just press the Add Multiplayer button sooner!

2. They Are Billions

Officially replacing Quake as the Brownest Game Ever Made, They Are Billions continues to sell a squillion copies of its zombie horde sim.

Sidetrack: one of my favourite arguments to have with my friend Stu is over the number billion. He, a very, very old man, understands a billion to mean 1,000,000,000,000. A million million. A trillion, he continues, is a million million million, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. And despite absolutely no one else on planet Earth using these numbers this way, he still does. How? I've no idea. A trillion, by this understanding, has absolutely no useful context. In his world, a billionaire has more money that most of the nations in the world added together. But despite the incredible uselessness of it all, he insists, won't budge, and starts flapping on about Latin origins. He would be most dissatisfied by the relative paucity of zombies in this game.

1. Plunkbat

Feeling in a Busdriver mood this week, so let's go back a good ways to my favourite video of his, Me - Time:

Cover image for YouTube video

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In this article

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Mac

Divinity: Original Sin 2

PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch

See 7 more

Grand Theft Auto V

Video Game

Human: Fall Flat

PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch

Northgard

PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch

PUBG: Battlegrounds

PS4, Xbox One, PC

Slay the Spire

PS4, PC, Nintendo Switch

They Are Billions

PS4, Xbox One, PC

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege

Video Game

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About the Author
John Walker avatar

John Walker

Co-founder

Once one of the original co-founders of Rock Paper Shotgun, we killed John out of jealousy. He now runs buried-treasure.org

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