Amazon’s MMO, New World, makes it into three of Steam’s best-of list in less than three months after its official launch.
Despite the struggles, New World gold exploits, and issues with the economy, New World managed to crawl its way into Steam’s Best of 2021 list. This is due, in part, to its strong showing at launch back in September 2021 where for the first month, there were more than 900k concurrent players. When 2021 concluded, the Amazon Game Studios title has made it into multiple top ten lists. Now, for those of you who aren’t aware of Steam’s Best of list, Valve publishes them annually, revealing the top new releases, sellers, most-played games, and more. Valve’s data also shows many of Steam’s most popular games of all time, including decade-old titles such as Grand Theft Auto 5 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive which still, to this day, continue to outsell newer titles on the platform.
New World Sits on Steam’s Top Sellers List
Despite launching near the end of 2021, New World zipped its way through Steam’s Top Sellers List thanks to a lot of players who made New World account. Each of the lists from Valve’s end-of-the-year wrap-up contains a handful of games, with their orders randomly listed. This means that it’s not clear which game was the most played or best-selling in a category. For example, games that are in the Platinum tier are considered as the top 12, while the Gold tier accounts for games that are ranked from 13 to 24. Meanwhile, Silver games are ranked 25 to 40, and games that belong in the Bronze tier are ranked 41 to 100. The lists come from the internal data at Valve, and they begin polling the games from January 1 till December 15 every year.
Arguably the most important one in Steam’s best-of lists is the top sellers which let players know what the most successful games of that year were. For 2021, the Platinum tier for the bestselling games were as follows:
- Naraka: Bladepoint
- PUBG: Battlegrounds
- Apex Legends
- Battlefield 2042
- Dota 2
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- New World
- Counter Strike: Global Offensive
- Valheim
- Dead by Daylight
- Destiny 2
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
Note that all of the games listed above are in random order.
Valve noted on their blog post that there were some repeat offenders on the list. CS: GO, GTA 5, and Dota 2 have all made the top sellers list for six years in a row now. Meanwhile, Rainbow Six Siege and PUBG: Battlegrounds are just behind them, with both titles being on the list five times consecutively. We can’t forget about Destiny 2 either, which has already made the list for three years running with 2019 being its first year on Steam following after moving off from Battle.net.
We also have a bunch of first-time winners as well, with news games like New World, Valheim, and Battlefield 2042 gracing the list. Apex Legends is also a notable title since it only made its debut on Steam late last year.
New World on Steam’s Top New Releases for 2021
New World didn’t just bag one award for 2021! New releases are another interesting category in one of Steam’s many best-of lists, as it highlights the top 25 games of the year. Here are the Platinum-tier Top New Releases for 2021:
- Back 4 Blood
- New World
- Naraka: Bladepoint
- Forza Horizon 5
- Age of Empires 4
- Farming Simulator 22
- Valheim
- Outriders
- Battlefield 2042
- Mass Effect: Legendary Edition
- Halo Infinite
- Resident Evil Village
Anotha One: New World Makes It to Three of Steam’s Best of Lists
The most-played games on Steam are broken into multiple categories by concurrent players. We all know that New World cracked 900,000 concurrent players during its peak, making it unsurprising to see the MMO a part of this list. Here are the games in 2021 that had at least 200,000 concurrent players:
- New World
- Rust
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Counter Strike: Global Offensive
- Valheim
- Dota 2
- Rust
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- PUBG: Battlegrounds
- Apex Legends
- Halo Infinite
Many of the games listed here also appeared on last year’s list such as PUBG, Dota 2, and CS: GO. Unexpectedly, Rust had a better year in 2021, graduating from the 100,000 last from 2020.
Final Thoughts
Vale doesn’t release any specifics on how they come up with their best-of lists for Steam, but it just goes to show that New World is one of the most solid games of the year on the PC platform. Despite its issues such as the New World gold dupe exploit, the MMORPG from Amazon muddled along to the top charts. There’s still much content that awaits New World players in 2022, especially since the dev team is finally aware of the issues that they’re about to face.
