The Top Games on Steam for July 2025

With August rapidly coming to a close, Steam has finally shared data on the top-performing games on Steam for July 2025, giving players a glimpse at what’s been played the most, a best-seller, highly-rated by users, or some combination of the three. Given the sheer amount of quality game releases that arrived in July, there were a lot of titles to sift through in Steam’s ranking of the service’s “Top” games for the month, with different groups of titles separated into Gold, Silver, and Bronze categories based on their total sales and peak player counts. The following 12 titles are the games that qualified for the Gold tier, representing the best-selling and most-played games on Steam for the past month.

• Release Date — July 15, 2025
• Developer — FireFly Studios
• Publisher — FireFly Studios
• Genre — Real-Time Tactics, City-Builder, Strategy
• Steam User Score — 87% (Very Positive)

Given how much fondness a lot of players have for old-school city-builders and RTS games, it’s not surprising to see a remaster of one of the genre’s classics land on the list of Steam’s top games for the month. Stronghold Crusader is a modern remaster of the beloved classic siege warfare game that places more of an emphasis on the actual fighting than resource collecting, politicking, and city-building. Plus, with an online mode to battle against other players instead of the computer, there’s almost endless replay value to be found here. Bonus points for retaining the original art style but making it look sharper and cleaner on modern displays.

• Release Date — July 29, 2025
• Developer — Weta Workshop
• Publisher — Private Division
• Genre — Life Sim
• Steam User Score — 81% (Very Positive)

Cozy life sims are all the rage right now, and combining that genre within the confines of the Lord of the Rings license was bound to be a slam dunk. Sure enough, Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game has been one of July’s most popular games in terms of both its sales and its player counts, with a lot of players hopping on the bandwagon to get a chance to grow some vegetables and mingle with some Hobbits as if they were Samwise Gamgee himself. Tales of the Shire suffered a few last-minute delays before its launch, but it appears it was ultimately worth the wait.

• Release Date — July 11, 2025
• Developer — Ludeon Studios
• Publisher — Ludeon Studios
• Genre — Simulation, Survival, Strategy
• Steam User Score — 93% (Very Positive)

Along with the game receiving a massive update recently that completely overhauled most of its systems (and attracted numerous new players), colony sim RimWorld also received the huge Odyssey expansion, which is essentially an entirely separate game. According to players, Odyssey fits well with the rest of the base game content for RimWorld and has the added bonus of being compatible with most existing mods, making its more nomadic, exploration-driven gameplay a welcome change of pace that adds an entirely new layer to the RimWorld experience.

• Release Date — July 1, 2025
• Developer — Amazing Seasun Games
• Publisher — Amazing Seasun Games
• Genre — Action, Shooter
• Steam User Score — 71% (Mostly Positive)

After dropping at the very beginning of July, it was easy to forget about Mecha Break because of the deluge of new releases that followed it. But despite some mixed reviews, this free-to-play PvP mech-battling game has apparently maintained a pretty solid following, enough for it to remain one of Steam’s top games for the entire month. Free-to-play games are normally pretty popular on Steam, and Mecha Break‘s arena-fighting gameplay is sure to scratch an itch for anyone who’s eagerly anticipating the upcoming Daemon X Machina sequel or hungry for FromSoftware to return to Armored Core.

• Release Date — July 24, 2025
• Developer — Tripwire Interactive
• Publisher — Tripwire Interactive
• Genre — FPS, Co-Op
• Steam User Score — 54% (Mixed)

There are a surprising number of games in Steam’s top-sellers list for July that have very middling review scores from players, proving that even mediocre games can end up being incredibly popular with the right gameplay hook. One such game is Killing Floor III, which, despite its simplistic co-op shooter gameplay and reportedly poor optimization, has remained popular among FPS players. Seems like all it really takes is the chance to shoot some zombies with a friend for players to continue looking past Killing Floor III‘s faults.

• Release Date — July 11, 2025
• Developer — Iron Galaxy
• Publisher — Activision
• Genre — Sports
• Steam User Score — 70% (Mostly Positive)

Even though it didn’t fare as well among users as the previous remake package in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 was still one of the top games on Steam for the month of July. It’s not all that surprising, given that the third and fourth Tony Hawk games were some of the most beloved skateboarding simulators of their time and remain two of the best-reviewed games ever. The biggest gripe players have with the remake is the retrofitting of THPS 4‘s parks into the gameplay of the first three games, adding in the 2-minute timer and effectively removing a lot of the freedom that the original gave players.

• Release Date — July 22, 2025
• Developer — Moonshot Games
• Publisher — Dreamhaven
• Genre — Action, FPS, Co-Op
• Steam User Score — 86% (Very Positive)

Essentially Sea of Thieves in space, Wildgate is a PvEvP looter-shooter in which you pilot a spacecraft around a beautifully rendered galaxy and steal loot from other players. The whole concept of “space pirates” is one that’s pretty pervasive throughout a lot of science fiction, and Wildgate taps into that successfully. Unfortunately, Wildgate‘s initial strong success around its launch has somewhat subsided, with the game dropping from an all-time peak player count of about 8,000 players to a daily average between 2 and 300.

• Release Date — July 24, 2025
• Developer — jrsjams
• Publisher — jrsjams
• Genre — Action
• Steam User Score — 92% (Very Positive)

Every once in a while, an indie developer will release a small game under the $10 or even $5 price point and see it become an immediate viral success, which is exactly what happened with Mage Arena. The premise of Mage Arena is incredibly simple but also presents something sure to draw in tons of players: build a custom wizard from a handful of premade classes, take it into a semi-open environment that doubles as a PvP arena, and go to town spellcasting against other players in a magical free-for-all. Nearly a month after its release, Mage Arena is still drawing in thousands of players a day, which isn’t bad at all for a little $3 game.

• Release Date — July 29, 2025
• Developer — Obsidian Entertainment
• Publisher — Xbox Game Studios
• Genre — Survival, Crafting
• Steam User Score — 84% (Very Positive)

The Early Access launch of Grounded 2 has been a major success for Obsidian Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios, and it couldn’t have been better-timed. The Survival genre has continued to grow in popularity over the last few years, and the recent 1.0 launches of games like Abiotic Factor have helped draw in plenty of new players, creating a perfect storm for Grounded 2‘s Early Access launch to catch on with a wide audience. Not only is Grounded 2 feeling good right out of the gate, it’s maintaining a solid 10,000 player daily average after an impressive peak of 50,000 concurrent players.

• Release Date — July 21, 2025
• Developer — Hypnohead
• Publisher — tinyBuild
• Genre — RTS, Roguelike
• Steam User Score — 90% (Very Positive)

The hype for The King Is Watching leading up to its release (on the strength of an excellent public demo) helped the game become an instant sales success at launch, immediately landing at the top of the “New and Trending” chart on the Steam Store page and garnering plenty of positive reviews from players. Naturally, this momentum helped The King Is Watching become one of July’s most successful games on the service, where its blend of RTS gameplay and roguelike structure (along with a unique mechanic related to the game’s ever-watchful monarch) helped that title earn a place as one of the year’s more critically acclaimed and successful indies.

• Release Date — July 15, 2025
• Developer — Bungie
• Publisher — Bungie
• Genre — FPS, MMORPG
• Steam User Score — 42% (Mixed)

For all the hate that players seem to regularly lob Destiny 2 and Bungie’s way, they sure can’t seem to stop playing it, evidenced by the fact that Destiny 2‘s latest expansion is one of Steam’s top games for July despite its negative user scores. The Edge of Fate does have its issues, but players seem to enjoy the new content it delivers for the most part, enough for them to hop back into Destiny 2 in droves. As of right now, Destiny 2 is still maintaining an impressive 20-30,000 daily average of players and remains one of Steam’s most popular MMO games.

• Release Date — July 23, 2025
• Developer — Leenzee
• Publisher — 505 Games
• Genre — Action RPG, Soulslike
• Steam User Score — 69% (Mixed)

One of July’s Steam highlights, in terms of both its player counts and its sales figures, was new Soulslike Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. Wuchang actually launched to a mostly negative reception, owing to a litany of bugs and other performance issues plaguing the PC version, which developer Leenzee has been actively fixing ever since. Accordingly, the user review scores for Wuchang continue to climb, helping it regain some lost ground and have its review scores match its commercial performance.