Steam Replay 2025

After getting a Steam Deck and leaning more heavily into PC gaming, I've been really eager to see my Steam Replay for 2025 and get a more meta view on what I played this past year.

While the Steam Replay doesn't span the entire calendar year (it registers everything you've played on Steam "between the first second of January 1 and the last second of December 14 (GMT)"), it covers enough of the year to get a good approximation. Plus, I didn't get my Steam Deck until April, so I was still mostly playing on my PlayStation 4 before then. I did play some games on Steam that would run on my Surface Pro 7, but the time after April is significantly more representative of all the games I played. In any case, this is the first year that Steam has taken the lion's share of my gaming time.

The summary image that Steam provides for social media sharing is a good overview. I played 43 games (36 of which were new) across 1,652 sessions, earning 470 achievements. Stardew Valley constituted 27% of my gaming time, the largest portion by an enormous margin. Second through fifth place were Oblivion Remastered, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Final Fantasy X, and Fallout Shelter, all occupying about 9-10%. The set of most played games is about what I expected, but the dominance of Stardew is a little surprising. I'll chalk that up to the time before April, when Stardew was one of the few games my laptop could run.

The streak of 84 days between September 21 and December 14 is slightly artificial. Yes, I did actually launch a Steam game and play on those days, but there were several days that I only loaded up a single game and played for a few minutes to maintain the streak. A single round of Pac-Snec, one or two battles in Final Fantasy X, just something to say that I did play on that day. Sure, I probably would've played most of those days anyway, but for a period I definitely was just making sure I had a large number of consecutive days.

"How You Compare" was where I truly realized just how much I have transitioned into PC gaming. The Steam Median player earned 11 achievements across 4 games, with a streak of 6 days. In contrast, I earned 470 achievements across 43 games, with a streak of 84 days. You could say things are getting serious.

My distribution of games by age deviated from the Steam Median player in a rather expected way. Steam has three categories for game age: New (released in 2025), Recent (released in the last 1-7 years), and Classic (released 8 or more years ago. New Releases constituted 12% of my total playtime, nearly identical to the 14% for the Steam Median. Recent Favorites were 16% for me, but the Steam Median was drastically higher at 44%. Classic Games were a whopping 72% of my playtime, while the typical Steam user was only 40%.

I suspected the New category would be around 10-20%, mostly due to Oblivion. That 7/8 year divide between Recent and Classic is far enough back that where games fall is a little hazy. However, as a "patient gamer" that frequently waits years for a good sale. I fully expected the older side to be where the majority of my time fell. Sure enough, 8+ years old is where most of my gaming landed, thanks in no small part to Stardew Valley.

The neat spider graph for genre did surprise me. Metroidvania is going to be a large chunk of that forever, but Hollow Knight was certainly a big part of it. Farming Sim was obvious from Stardew Valley. JRPG came from the obsession I had with Final Fantasy X. 3D Platformer, though? I can't think of what I would have played so much that it occupied such a large portion of the graph.

"By the Numbers" made me a little ashamed. 1,209 screenshots shared across not even 365 days feels excessive. However, I share a lot of screenshots for what I feel are valid reasons. It allows me to track what I was playing over time, long after I put a game down. Plus, it's how I get images to share here from specific games. I can't know while I'm playing what I would or wouldn't want screenshots of, so I try to take a bunch and share them so I can review them later. Sure, I can manually load up the game to take a few menu shots later, but I would rather have the images already available as I'm writing reviews or whatever.

I thought the detailed breakdown for some of the top played games was really cool. I got 100% of the achievements in Stardew Valley, Oblivion Remastered, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Fallout Shelter. I technically got the platinum trophy for Final Fantasy X as well, but because it's a bundle with X-2, I don't have 100% of the achievements. That's a task for next year.

My Playtime by Month was also very unusual. July was my highest month, which I assume is when we were playing a lot of co-op Stardew Valley with the kids. June, which I expected to be a lot higher, was my second least-played month of the year. I suppose coming off of Oblivion Remastered, I just wasn't wanting to start another time sink of a game, so I just didn't play much of anything.

The device distribution was actually much more balanced than I expected. I knew the Steam Deck would be the majority, but I didn't expect Windows to represent much at all. I suppose the time before April was a portion of that, and we did get an Asus ROG (model GA401Q) laptop from a friend, which I had to put through its paces. Still, it isn't surprising that the Steam Deck was the largest portion, and will continue to be.

The streak, again, was slightly artificial. Would I have played that many days normally? Perhaps. But I also care about imaginary points more than I should in a lot of cases and intentionally pushed it up. Hopefully through 2026, I'll play more organically and just see what happens.

There were a ton of games that I played <1% of, but I suppose that's the nature of the platform. It's real easy to pick up a demo or find something in my library that I got in a bundle or free and just try it out. Honestly, I think that might be one of the best properties of PC gaming, the opportunity to try new games. Alas, most of those weren't noteworthy, so we'll leave them in the soon-to-be-forgotten background of 2025.

One worthwhile mention is the absence of The Sims 4. Where it was 99% of my play time in 2024 thanks to my wife, it didn't even get downloaded to any devices this year. That is a huge step toward a more accurate representation of my actual gaming habits within Steam. Final Fantasy IV should have occupied more time, but I played it mostly during that untracked window in the second half of December.

While we're summarizing 2025, it did seem appropriate to pull in my PlayStation 2025 Wrap-Up for those first few months. Although I did play some Steam games on my laptop before I got the Steam Deck, most of my gaming was on the PS4, either directly or via remote play.

Skyrim was the game I played most of (no surprise). Plus a little bit of Hogwarts Legacy and Monster Hunter: World. Far Cry 5 and Crash Bandicoot 4 are both nominally included, but I think the majority of my time in those games was back in 2023. I would've had more time in Skyrim and probably gotten the platinum trophy for it, but the inability to get all of the Daedric artifacts because of the death of an NPC burned me out.

I did get a few trophies this year, and while I'm hesitant to say they're my last ever, I don't expect to get any PlayStation trophies in 2026. I have shifted over to Steam in a way that doesn't leave much for me on PS4, and I don't anticipate getting a PS5 unless one just falls into my lap. I do miss platinum trophies as a mark of finishing a game excluding DLC, but Steam achievements have certainly been adequate in scratching that itch for me.

It's been a good year in gaming. I've played a lot of fun games, got some new hardware, and started the migration to Steam as my main platform. In 2026, we have the promise of new hardware from Steam, and my Steam Deck is still more than capable of playing most of what I throw at it. I'm excited to see what the future holds.