Arc Raiders was Steam’s best-selling game the week of Christmas, and Battlefield 6 wasn’t far behind

Arc Raiders was Steam’s best-selling game the week of Christmas, and Battlefield 6 wasn’t far behind

In case you haven’t heard, multiplayer shooters are undergoing a vibe shift—as PC Gamer’s Morgan Park outlined in that article, 2025 met players with a number of games that forego brutal competition in favor of more approachable, chaotic, casual-friendly shooting. It seems like players are eager to embrace the new order, as two decidedly chill games dominated the sales charts around Christmas: Arc Raiders and Battlefield 6.

That stat comes courtesy of SteamDB, which gathered a list of the top ten best-selling games (excluding free-to-play games) from December 23 to today, December 30. There are plenty of familiar faces: the award-guzzling Clair Obscur, the absurdly excellent Baldur’s Gate 3, and our favorite game of 2025, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. There’s also some games that you just take for granted as always being best sellers: Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced and the latest EA Sports FC, for example.

But at the very top split only by the Steam Deck are Arc Raiders and Battlefield 6, two shooters that offer relatively intense, competitive styles of shooter (extraction and modern military) without all the sweat. There’s not so much as a competitive ranked mode of play in BF6, and Arc Raiders is a breakout hit in a genre once known primarily for being niche and hardcore. As Elie Gould put it in their review: “Finally, a less stressful extraction shooter.”

You can find the expanded list of 100 games on SteamDB, which includes everything from indie co-op hit RV There Yet? to two different Assassin’s Creed games one after another. The biggest surprise for me is that Ubisoft’s Avatar game, Frontiers of Pandora, is at number 19 above Red Dead Redemption 2 and Elden Ring Nightreign. I guess that’s the power of a film series that unfailingly generates hundreds of millions of dollars every time it surfaces.

2026 games: All the upcoming games
Best PC games: Our all-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Best co-op games: Better together

3 Comments

  1. zkreiger

    It’s exciting to see Arc Raiders topping the charts over the holidays! The shift in multiplayer shooters definitely adds an interesting dynamic to the gaming landscape. Looking forward to seeing how these trends develop in the coming year!

  2. wilhelm29

    Absolutely! It’s fascinating how new gameplay styles and community engagement can drive this vibe shift in multiplayer shooters. Arc Raiders, with its unique blend of co-op mechanics, seems to be tapping into what players are craving right now. It’ll be interesting to see how other games adapt to these changes!

  3. ima01

    I completely agree! It’s interesting to see how developers are experimenting with different mechanics to keep players engaged. The rise of cooperative gameplay elements in multiplayer shooters could really shape the future of the genre.

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