Videogames Industry Snapshot - September 2025
From releases trends to pricing — the state of the industry before GTA VI’s release.
Hello, my fellow gamers!
It is the first Saturday of October 2025, and it’s time to look back and read the industry by numbers in our pill-sized format. There’s nothing better than data to reveal meaning and patterns.
In this new monthly post, I’ll take a look at the state of the videogame industry during September.
Gamedevpills Industry Snapshot is based on many metrics but the number of sales is not one of them. The source of information is mainly steamdb.com so other platforms (Xbox, Playstation or Nintendo) are not included. Enjoy!
September 2025 Overview
Trends & Releases on Steam – First Impact Titles
September Podium 🏆
Trends by Follower Growth - September trend
Most Wishlisted Games - Future in a glance
Videogames Industry Changing Prices, again - The Bad
Top Success Releases on Steam - Number of Players
Podium
1. Hollow Knight: Silksong
Silksong takes place after the events of Hollow Knight. The warrior Hornet is kidnapped from Hallownest by a group of veiled bugs and transported to the distant kingdom of Pharloom, where she faces her past, slowly gaining information about herself while travelling and fulfilling many minor quests, known as wishes.
2. Borderlands 4
In Borderlands 4, you play as a Vault Hunter: a badass mercenary on the hunt for alien Vaults, wielding wild guns and devastating abilities. Each Vault Hunter class offers a unique playstyle that empowers you with one of three signature abilities called Action Skills. Between your Action Skills and three branching skill trees, each packed with socketable abilities and potent passive effects, you can create a huge variety of supremely powerful builds.
3. skate.
skate. is a free-to-play online, massive-multiplayer skateboarding sandbox set in the city of San Vansterdam featuring cross-progression and cross-platform gameplay. This isn’t a sequel, remake, or a remaster. It’s the evolution of the Skate franchise.
Trends by Followers Growth – The Call Effect
Even without much hype around, meaning less marketing efforts or less financial capacity for it, videogames could have a spike at their popularity as soon as they are released.
Just to provide an example based on below list, we have Megabonk a title that could be described in a few words as the child of Risk of Rain and Vampire Survivors. With just 2,000 concurrent players at its release.
It is now gaining around 30% of followers on a weekly basis and they reached a peak of 91,090 players, it is now #7 in top sellers.
It’s a clear case of non-anticipated organic growth and success.
Most Wishlisted Games - The Future
On the next November Industry Snapshot we’ll be able to align the success of the most anticipated games by number of players, there are many interesting titles to be released during this month… Ninja Gaiden 4 is my favourite 😊
Videogames Industry Changing Prices, again
If there is only one pain in common across humans, it’s the economy.
It hurts when you are used to pay a price for something and suddenly realize it changed, It feels like your expectations towards that product require another evaluation.
After the wave of layoffs, now we are facing a worldwide financial regulation that unfortunately affects our hobby.
Xbox Game Pass Subscription
Being the owner of an Xbox Series X system and following Microsoft Gaming business path during the last 5 years is kind of sad to point fingers to this organization but unfortunately, that’s the real scenario.
Microsoft increased their biggest tier subscription by 200% since the service was launched on June 1, 2017.
But this is not only about their subscription model, during September they also raised their system pricing
Xbox Consoles
I wrote a whole article about this industry change that you can read here, where other important organizations decided to follow that strategy.
Wrapping Up
My goal with this newsletter is to give you a data-driven, honest look at where the industry stands—so you can spot patterns, understand the changes, and maybe even find inspiration for your own projects or just for the next game you want to play.
I also post about Game Development techniques and general advice, I’m excited to share some new content that will be landing on this platform soon.