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Steam Charts: Life Changing Edition

Recharted territory

A man who has never even seen a boob in a Yakuza 0 screenshot.
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Feature by John Walker Co-founder
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Welcome to the Award Winning Steam Charts! Yes, you heard that right! I wrote "Award Winning"! It hasn't technically won any awards, but since everyone can agree it should have, it seems like it would almost be lying not to write it. But enough about how bloody brilliant I am, here are the top grossing games on your Steams this week.

10. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege

Poor Vier Reiter, that's not a nice thing to say.

I'm fascinated to learn if the possessive Tom Clancying of every title not even loosely based on his books is some sort of legal requirement. The thought occurs after I noted that Amazon's new Jack Ryan series, starring Chuck as the titular hero, is properly titled, "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan".

No, no, of course it's just dull marketing, no matter how increasingly disingenuous/peculiar it might be, five years after his death. Anyway, this morbid and unfunny point aside, the original Rainbow Six novel took place in the Jack Ryan universe, so it'd be rather disappointing if some sort of magnificent cross-promotion weren't coming at the end of the month.

8. Stardew Valley

It may all look very cute and cosy, but underneath the surface of Stardew Valley lies a seething contempt for mankind that is just waiting to burst out. You mark my words, one day, your pretty little towns and fishing villages will change. CHANGE. You'll load up the game, and things will have turned, the delightful pixel graphics will have become the crude angular polygons of the early 90s, and those happy-go-lucky folks will reveal their true selves.

A little 20% off sale and the rather large official addition of multiplayer has seen this work-instead-of-play game re-enter the charts.

Which is much like the reason it re-entered three months ago, when its beta multiplayer was added. So my theory is, if ConcernedApe can just keep adding multiplayer to the game, they'll never run out of money.

7. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

If you stop buying it, I'll stop posting it.

The permanent appearance of CSGO in the charts is in fact nothing to do with people buying new copies on new accounts after bans. It is because recently players have discovered that if you print out multiple copies of the game, and stack them fourteen high, you can make an effective wall to keep out friends.

6. Yakuza 0

There's definitely some confusion surrounding the numbering of the Yakuza series, especially with the first game in the series to appear on PC being titled number nothing. It is, in fact, very simple.

The first game to come out was Yakuza 16, released on the Sega Rampart in Belgium, in 1969. Since then, every three years another game in the series has been released, with a descending number. Roughly fifty years on, the series has finally reached Yakuza 0, which was of course prophesied to release on PC in the Bible.

Edwin rather likes it.

5. Rend

I hereby demand that all games featuring floating landscape have to justify its appearance in wholly convincing backstory and exposition.

In description it reads like someone shoved their hand into the bag of Popular Gaming Trends and just grabbed a fistful. Open world, survival, team-based, and of course, early access. But looking at the pictures, goodness me, it looks incredibly gorgeous, and rather intrigues me.

If I can find time, I do want to plunge in for a look at this one, to see if it's more than the sum of its tags. Meanwhile, Dominic outlined a few more details last week.

4. Grand Theft Auto V

Clearly you haven't played GTAV properly if you have trouble recalling this scene.

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

This R2D2 cookie jar

3. Plunkbat

I like to think of it as a parachuting sim, to justify the amount of time I'd spend doing that rather than fighting on the ground.

I can't really get used to this. The Notepad file of a skeleton template I cut and paste into the CMS to write Steam Charts every week has Plunkbat already filled in for the #1 spot! That worked fine for a year. Is this forever now?

Also, a quick message to Simon Angry who is already writing out this week's comment about how it's worse than a warcrime that we accurately and appropriately abbreviate this silly game name to "Plunkbat":

Simon,

"PUBG" doesn't even make sense! The game isn't called PlayerUnknown's Battle Grounds. The "U" is dubious enough, but there's no justification for the "G" whatsoever. And when, without it, the abbreviation would be the far more catchy "PUB", are you really sure you've chosen the right hill to die on?

Yours sincerely,
RPS

PS. Plunkbat.

2 & 9. Monster Hunter: World

I recreated my dead cat Dexter in the game, and now it's too sad to play.

What a peculiar display this has been, dominating the Steam Charts for weeks, and it's still not out. This week, folks. This is the week when it'll come out and everyone will realise how poorly optimised it is for PC, and will be raging and furious about the crappy framerates on anything but a monster rig, and no one at all will have the perspicacity to question whether pre-ordering at full price before reviews are out is a good idea.

Good news is, the bug that was making the game crash every few minutes is seemingly gone. But I predict a ridiculous number of issues to come later this week. I will be smug about it.

1. No Man's Sky

It really is indecently pretty in space.

I'm so pleased No Man's Sky is doing so well again. It really is an absolute mess of a game, but such a pleasant mess to play. But this can't distract us from hearing some music.

So this week, let's go for I Want The Wind To Blow by The Microphones, because I just heard the Song Exploder episode about it, which you should absolutely listen to.

Cover image for YouTube video
Watch on YouTube

The Steam Charts are compiled via Steam's internal charts of the highest grossing games on Steam over the previous week.

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