Steam Charts: Grounds for Battlecelebration

Alec is still away, ostensibly on holiday but presumed dead. Ride in peace, Alec Meer. All that remains of last week's chart caretaker is a selection of small bones John coughed up, so it's my turn. It's a good week in the charts!

We've some new games, some familiar faces, and at least one familiar face with a new game. It's a shame Mass Effect: Andromeda's Origin exclusivity keeps it out of this comparison. Not to ruin the suspension but: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the new early access Hunger Royale game, is riding high at the top of the hit parade.

10. Metro Redux Bundle

The mildly revamped re-releases of 4A's grim post-apocalyptic FPSs were on sale for $6 the pair, which was quite the bargain. Hello again, you two! Welcome back.

9. NieR: Automata

Number nine? What a shame! The PC version is wonky but it's a wonderful game, this. I'm on my third way through, past endings A and B, and I do hope many other people have been bold/curious enough to continue. Framing these chapter breaks as endings does seem a daft way to dissuade folks from finishing your game. Anyway! Two warteens beat up robots and set pieces escalate and it's great and then your heart breaks over and over.

8. Toukiden 2

Omega Force return with more of their Monster Hunter-ish action-RPG. You fight huge demons with silly faces and cut them into pieces. I've heard good things but the only faces I have time to cut right now are robofaces.

7. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege

Week in, week out, Siege reminds us: smashing stuff is really cool, okay. I'm hugely impressed by its staying power and glad to see Ubisoft stick with it.

6. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

It's common knowledge that CS:GO's sales are propped up by banned players buying new copies. It's also common knowledge that goldfish have three-second memories, that swimming after eating is deadly, that cops have to tell the truth when you ask if they're cops, and that Alec isn't nourishing the RPS vegetable patch he's simply on holiday, so don't believe everything They tell you.

Alternative/companion theory: CS is one of the most defining games of FPS history and people like shooting each other. (I am still a bit grumbly about how impactful CS was, how modding scenes collapsed as people rushed to emulate CS, but it was their decision and they wanted to do it and I'm not owed anything, so whatever.)

5. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands

Brendan got bored and frustrated with Wildlands but hey, evidently plenty of folks dig it. It is, at the very least, one of the few open-world co-op sandbox shooters rendered in modern big-budget graphics-o-vision.

4. H1Z1: King of the Kill

Former Battle Royale 'em up champ King of the Kill slides by one spot this week from 3 to 4, which is... suspicious.

3. NieR: Automata

Oh ho! Fake-out! That Nier at #9 was technically a different SKU [one of the few cases where using 'SKU' in games shouldn't be punished by stomping on the writer's fingers -ed.]. Just like us, you too adore those stylish warteens.

2. Grand Theft Auto V

Few games present a grand vision of virtual worlds like Grand Theft Auto V. It's so big! So detailed! So much fun to aimlessly pootle around in. It's one of those games some people will happily revisit time and time again to aimlessly play, not even in GTA Online. I see its permanent chart position as a sign that more people are buying fancy gaming PCs, which is great, and want the fanciest virtuacity they can run. (Or, like common knowledge will tell you about CS, the sales are all returning banned people. I've warned you about Them, though.)

Also: people like murders.

1. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

All hail the new mega-hit early access Hunger Gameser! This one's boasting of its genre pedigree, proudly the gamebaby of a chap behind Arma's Battle Royale mods and from King of the Kill. Battlegrounds looks to be doing the usual Battle Royale 'em up dealio -- loads of people are dropped into a murderzone to scavenge for weapons and supplies then kill each other -- but with the novel idea of being prettier and less janky than its rivals.

That seems to be working out all right, as the developers boasted this week that Battlegrounds "has earned more than eleven million dollars in revenue in just three days". That is a big number. King of the Kill still has more players but hey, it's only been five days.

I believe we've airdropped our boy Brendan into the Battleground to tell us about it but, for now, I did quite enjoy watching Northernlion and chums snuff it.

As ever, these charts are based on a ranking Valve release weekly on a Sunday afternoon, not the current top sellers.