In brief: The end of the year is almost upon us, which means Steam's annual Replay feature is here. In addition to revealing all your platform-related stats during 2025, Replay shows the aggregated data of other users. Interestingly, just 14% of playtime by those on Steam was spent in games released this year.
Steam Replay presents a slew of information related to your time on Valve's platform since the start of 2025: How many games you played, the number of achievements you unlocked, favorite games, longest streaks, favorite genres, and so on.
One section breaks down your total playtime, showing how much was spent on new games released this year, recent favorites released in the last one to seven years, and classic titles from eight or more years ago.
Valve also provides the information on how much time all Steam users spent in new, recent, and classic games. The least amount, 14%, was in spent in the new releases category.
Games released in the last 1 to 7 years were the most popular, with users spending 44% of their time playing them. Games released eight or more years ago were a close second, accounting for 40% of all users' playtime.
Compared to a year ago, the amount of playtime Steam users spent on games 8 years or older has gone up – it was 37% in 2024 – while the figure for games 1-7 years old has dropped by 3%.
As shown in our Best PC Games (You Should Be Playing) feature, there have been plenty of great games this year, from the incredible Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and Hollow Knight: Silksong. So, why are older games taking up so much playtime?
A look at SteamDB's most-played Steam games list is a perfect illustration of older titles' enduring popularity: Counter-Strike 2, DOTA 2, and PUBG: Battlegrounds take the top three spots.
It's also worth remembering that Steam has been around since 2003. While older users, the writer included, still love new games, the pull of classics can be stronger among people who played them first time around.
Returning to the Replay feature, it also includes a spider graph showing the kind of games you spent most time in during 2025. My love of Space Marine 2 helped push Warhammer 40K to the top. Dispatch and Anno 1880 were also influences, as was retro-style point-and-click game The Drifter, which is highly recommended.