The Name of the Game

A game’s title is the cheapest discoverability decision a studio makes. It decides whether players find the game in search, and whether the game disappears among lookalikes.

Steam released 21,170 games in 2025. Name Your Game, a free Gies tool, maps the words in every game title on Steam, the full catalog through September 1, 2026. Type a word and the tool shows how many games already use it, whether its share is rising or falling, and which games used it most recently.

Simulator leads, in 1.9% of titles

Simulator is the most common title word on Steam, with 2,398 titles, or 1.9% of the total. VR follows with 2,308. No other word reaches 1%.

This fragmentation likely explains the pull toward searchable words. With no dominant vocabulary, the terms players type into Steam search are the closest thing to shared ground.

VR fell eight years in a row, simulator rose to 2.5%

VR appeared in 7.1% of Steam releases in 2017 and 0.6% in 2025, with a decline in every year between. Puzzle followed a different curve: 1.6% of releases in 2021, during the pandemic casual wave, then 0.5% in 2025. Jigsaw fell from 0.84% of releases in 2021 to 0.10% in 2025.

Simulator grew through both cycles. It became the most common title word of the year in 2023 and reached 2.5% of releases in 2025, the highest share for any word since VR in 2020. In 2026, it passed VR on the all-time count.

That share also sets the competition. In 2025, 530 new releases carried “simulator” in the title. The word places a game in simulator search results, next to every other game that made the same choice.

Template words grew far faster than Steam

Total Steam releases roughly doubled, from 10,178 in 2021 to 21,170 in 2025. Title words tied to proven templates grew much faster:

• Survivors: three titles in 2021, 68 in 2023, and 90 in 2025, following the Vampire Survivors template.

• Backrooms: one title in 2021 and 66 in 2025, an internet-lore horror subgenre.

• Idle: 20 titles in 2021, 96 in 2025, and 173 in 2026 through September 1.

• Cozy: three titles in 2021, 41 in 2025, and 53 in 2026 through September 1.

As a share of releases, backrooms grew 54-fold between 2020-2021 and 2025-2026. Survivors and cozy each grew 16-fold.

Template words tend to climb fast. A studio that adopts one once the wave is visible is likely to launch into a crowded field. The count shows today’s competition; the trend signals competition at launch.

Idle, clicker, and backrooms games rate lowest; cozy and cats rate highest

Among Steam games with at least 50 reviews, titles containing idle average a 66% rating, clicker 64%, and backrooms 65%. Titles containing love average 77%, legend 76%, and story 75%. Simulator sits at 70%.

Cozy (83%) and cats (82%) post the highest averages in this comparison, on 15 and 67 rated games respectively, so the cozy figure rests on a small base.

The link is correlation. A title word does not produce a rating.

A few more findings

• Idle passed its full-year 2025 total before September. By September 1, 2026, 173 new titles carried the word, against 96 in all of 2025. Cozy did the same, with 53 against 41.

• Cats became the fourth most common title word among 2025 releases, with 171 titles. The word first entered the top 10 in 2024.

• VR appeared in 48 titles released in 2026 through September 1, against 422 in 2017 alone.

• Simulator reached 403 titles through September 1, 2026, after 530 in all of 2025.

Title counts measure supply. A word used in hundreds of titles signals crowded supply, and an unused word signals open space. Demand for either needs separate evidence.

Did Anyone Win The Console War?

Die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. For years, Sony enjoyed good guy status next to Microsoft, the evil megacorporation that wanted to kill used games and force you to stay on good behavior. It peaked at the launch of the PS4, when the company released a little video mocking Xbox’s always-on policies and earned a place in the hearts of gamers worldwide.

13 years later, the console war is over.

Xbox lost, this much is clear. Redmond’s video game operation is currently thrashing around and reorganizing itself, backed into a corner and doing whatever it can to salvage a business that owns some of the most recognizable IP in gaming but which lost the console war about as definitively as SEGA. Doublefine, Undead Labs, Arkane, Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games: they’re all left or leaving in some capacity. Halo Labs is being shrunk down and shunted into Activision and Obsidian to Bethesda. These are the tectonic moves of a company trying to make it work in a world they barely recognize. They’ve got Hideo Kojima now, for what that’s worth.

But did PlayStation win? And if they did, what did they win?

As keen-eyed observers recently noted, the company has only launched 4 new IPs this generation, two were shut down and the other two, Returnal and Saros, are kinda the same thing. God of War may be past its peak, Horizon is definitely past its peak, and Naughty Dog is actually launching something new. It’s hard to argue that the net power of Sony’s IP hasn’t declined even after their grand victory. Big AAA games just aren’t the reliable bet that they used to be, and killer apps are harder to form in a world choked with excellent games.

Good guy status, now, is definitely gone. The decision to end physical game production was just the sort of tone-deaf decision that Don Mattrick’s Xbox may have made, now coming from the company that once seemed above all of that. And the black eye isn’t going away: Black Myth: Wukong physical publisher Michael Yum called the decision “sad and devastating” just a few days ago. PlayStation is built on those that grew up in the Halcyon days of console gaming, and those people like discs. Even if they don’t buy them, they like to know they’re around. Vibes matter.

That famous used games video from 2013? The two stars, Shuhei Yoshida and Adam Boyes, have both left the company. Yoshida did not appear to do so under pleasant circumstances. And they used their independence to mock the decision at Tokyo Game Show the other week.

And this is all just ominous movement before Sony has to deal with releasing the PS6, which will come up against RAM prices, global inflation, the impotence of new exclusives and, perhaps most of all, the relative pointlessness of the endeavor in a world where graphical fidelity has plateaued.

PlayStation is doing fine right now, sitting pretty as the dominant console not made by Nintendo. But the warning signs are everywhere, and Xbox now serves as a grim example of what happens when such a massive ship finds itself on the wrong course. Even now, likely a few years away from genuine trouble, it may be too late to steer away.

What’s Dave Playing?

Mouse: P.I.: A charming little detective story done up in 1930s-style animation, the first major product I can think of to use this art style since Cuphead

Task Bar Hero: My little guys are idling away as we speak. It’s been a busy month, I’ve got to admit. Sometimes it’s nice to have a game that plays itself.

That’s the month. If you want to hire any of the brilliant minds at Mighty Diamonds, head to our Website.