Multiplayer games dominated Steam Next Fest in October, with 9 of top 10 demos featuring online or co-op elements

Another Next Fest has come to an end, so it is time to look at the biggest demos. One of the most interesting observation is the dominance of games with multiplayer features, especially compared to previous events.

Supervive (left), Delta Force (top right), Popucom (bottom left), The Precinct (bottom right)

More than 3,000 games participated in the latest Steam Next Fest, which ran from October 14 to 21. Valve has now revealed the top 50 demos ordered by number of unique players.

The top 10 can be seen below:

1. Delta Force — tactical first-person shooter from Tencent’s TiMi Studio Group (Honor of Kings and Call of Duty: Mobile);
2. SUPERVIVE — MOBA/hero shooter from Theorycraft Games, a new studio led by Riot, Bunige, Blizzard, and Valve veterans);
3. POPUCOM — co-op platformer with match-3 elements from Chinese studio Hypergryph (best known for its mobile hit Arknights);
4. Gladio Mori — multiplayer fighting game focused on physics-based duels;
5. Strinova — anime-style third-person shooter from Chinese publisher iDreamSky;
6. The Precinct — sandbox police sim set in a fictional city in the 80s, which surpassed 100k downloads in the first three days of the event;
7. Rivals of Aether II — Smash Bros-like arena fighting game;
8. Sand — PvPvE open world shooter featuring giant walking machines;
9. Windblown — roguelite action game with co-op elements from Dead Cells developer Motion Twin, which generated 500k wishlists during the event;
10. Fast Food Simulator — job sim game about running a fast food restaurant.

Further down the list, there are also games like Streets of Rogue 2, AI LIMIT, Permafrost, Luma Island, Temtem: Swarm, and KLETKA.

Interestingly, three of the top 5 demos by unique users are free-to-play games: Delta Force, Supervive, and Strinova.

Another observation: nine of the top 10 demos feature multiplayer or co-op elements. In addition to the aforementioned titles, these include Popucom, Gladio Mori, Rivals of Aether II, Sand, Winblown, and Fast Food Simulator.

One of the reasons is that larger publishers like Tencent started using Next Fest to promote their new games. For example, NetEase’s multiplayer survival shooter Once Human was the top demo by unique users during the June 2024 edition.

When looking at the biggest demos by peak concurrent players on SteamDB, the leaders are pretty much the same, including Delta Force, Supervive, Strinova, and Popucom. However, there are several games on the list that didn’t make the top 10 by unique users:

• Sultan’s Game — narrative-driven card-based RPG with elements of resource management and life sim genres (developed by Chinese indie studio Double Cross);
• Tinkerlands — co-op survival game developed by CodeManu & Endless Coffee and published by HypeTrain Digital;
• Cozy Island — cozy base-building adventure game with co-op elements from Chinese developer LazyFish Studio.

Top 10 Steam Next Fest (October 2024 Edition) demos by peak concurrent players

In the latest GameDiscoverCo newsletter, Simon Carless also shared the top 10 games by follower increase. Delta Force leads the list, with 10.7k new followers, followed by The Precinct (+9.1k), Supervive (+6k), Permafrost (+5.3k), and AI Limit (+4.8k). The top 10 also includes titles like Project: Mist and Keep Driving.

More data about the latest Next Fest, including top tags and comparison with previous editions, can be found in GameDiscoverCo’s massive Google spreadsheet.