How games are picked

The problems

Steam alone releases more than 2,000 games a month. Nobody can play them all, and most of them find no audience at all.

The games that do get noticed usually have a marketing budget. A small studio with a great game has no such lever, and a player who would have loved it never hears of it.

The usual guides do not close the gap. The press reviews a small slice of what comes out, and a score tells you what a reviewer thought, which is a different thing from what players are doing. Most-played charts show the same huge games every week of the year.

Our solution

We use an algorithm to pick games, since no editor can play 2,000 games a month and personal taste would skew a hand-picked list. An algorithm has its own biases, so our rules are public, and this page explains them. They are based on player activity, so the lists reflect what players actually care about.

We have two main lists: Buzzing, which ranks the games people are playing and the announcements people are talking about, and Upcoming, which highlights unreleased games people are most excited about.

Buzzing measures how fast an audience grows. A game doubling from 500 to 1,000 players counts the same as one growing from 50,000 to 100,000. Ranked by size alone, the list would show Counter-Strike and Grand Theft Auto V every week; ranked by growth, a small studio can stand next to a big publisher. Reviews, viewers and launch impact also count, and a new release gets credit for its size during its first month. A big announcement enters Buzzing too, released or not, and its buzz fades within a few days.

Upcoming reads interest from Steam wish lists and from trailer and stream views. Wish lists matter most, since adding a game is a personal commitment.

We believe an algorithm is the best way to find buzzing and upcoming games, but we also value human-curated content. We create our own lists for seasonal content and themes like Cozy vibes and Couch co-op for playing with family and friends. Every player on Goood Games can also publish their own ranked or tiered list. Each solution has its place.

The algorithms

Several times a day, our system checks numbers from Steam, Twitch, and review sites: how many people are playing, watching, adding a game to their wish list, and the scores the game has received. All these numbers come from independent platforms.

Buzzing

Games people play and announcements people talk about, ranked on four kinds of evidence.

We measure change by comparing each day’s data to its value a few days earlier. A single day of high activity doesn’t determine results. We use the median of the last three days and compare it to the previous three-day median. Steam player counts are shown as a percentage of all players in the top 100 games for that day, so weekend spikes do not indicate growth. For Twitch, we consider both streams and viewers, which reduces the impact of a single large channel compared to the same audience spread across multiple channels.

We weigh signals differently depending on whether they align or conflict. When multiple factors support a game, such as growth, positive reviews, a recent launch, and being within its first two weeks, the combined score is more than double that of any single factor. If sources disagree, the game retains its ranking unless a source with sufficient reviews gives it a low score and no other source rates it highly. You can view these disagreements on the game’s page. Review bombing attempts to influence scores, but Steam removes detected campaigns from its displayed score, which we use.

A big reveal enters the list through its trailers, whether the game is out, still coming or has no release date. The more people watch a trailer each day, the higher the game scores. That buzz fades within a few days, where players fade over weeks. Before release, reviews and scores give a game no credit.

For released games, player activity is the most significant factor, as it reflects genuine engagement. Games missing most of the four key factors are still ranked, but lower until more data is available. The two-week boost gives new games a brief advantage to build momentum, but this benefit fades quickly. Games must show clear signals to maintain their ranking.

Upcoming

Games due in the next two years. Nobody can play them yet, so the four categories shift.

Wish lists and trailer views only increase, so we measure their average over the past seven days. That average reads anticipation that lasts; the spike of a big reveal shows on Buzzing instead. We rank each game against others for each metric, then combine those ranks using the weights above. Games with fewer available signals receive lower scores due to limited data.

We weight watching activity most heavily, since nearly every game has a trailer and audiences engage with betas, demos, and showcases before release. Wish lists are unique to Steam, but when available, they represent the strongest individual signal. We give trailer views less weight because they can be easily inflated.

We determine these weights based on our judgment and will adjust them as needed. The final section provides more detail on platforms with limited data sharing.

The results

We checked the algorithm against two pairs of games from 2026. The first pair had the same press score and very different players. The second had strong reviews on one side and none on the other. In both, the Buzzing list followed the players.

Same reviews, different players

Two big games came out eight days apart in May 2026. Each had around 90 press reviews, and both scored 90. That acclaim put both games at the top of the buzzing list the week they came out.

Then their audiences went different ways. Forza opened with four times as many players on Steam and kept most of them; 007 opened smaller and lost half within a fortnight. On Twitch, the two looked alike, so the difference came from the people playing. The list moved with them: Forza held a place in the top 5 for three weeks, 007 for ten days. The press opened the door for both. Players decided how long each stayed.

No reviews against strong ones

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls came out in August 2026 from Capcom and Marvel, with trailers past 3 million views and a press score of 85 from 64 reviews. Two weeks later How to Fish came out from a two-game studio, self-published, with a trailer in one summer showcase and a following on TikTok. The press did not review it. OpenCritic has no entry, and Metacritic has one review and no score.

Tōkon entered the buzzing list in 2nd place on launch day, and its players left within the week: out of Steam's top 100 in six days, out of our top 10 in five. How to Fish arrived through streamers and Steam's own front page, reached 4th in Steam's chart within a week, took first place on our list the day after launch and stayed in the top 5 for three weeks. Its Steam reviews went from 69 to more than 23,000 in 19 days, with 96% positive. Anticipation and acclaim got Tōkon onto the list. Players kept How to Fish there, without a single press review.

The upcoming list tells the same story from the other side. For the month before its release, Tōkon sat between 19th and 23rd, carried by its trailers and PlayStation's pre-order list. How to Fish never appeared on it at all: it had no Steam wish list rank and no trailer we could match. Upcoming reads what a game promises in public. Buzzing reads what players do with it.

Limitations

Our rankings are based on public data, which varies greatly by platform. Steam, for example, shares charts, reviews, and wish lists, making its games easy to track. In contrast, consoles like PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo do not publish player counts, and some stores provide little or no data, so games on these platforms are harder to see.

As a result, games on data-rich platforms like Steam or those widely streamed on Twitch and YouTube are easier to track and may rank higher. Console exclusives and games with limited public data can be underrepresented and may not appear as prominently as their audiences deserve.

When data is missing, we judge games by the information we have. We continually add new sources, and each one helps us spot more good games and make our rankings fairer.