arabdubai

Just as prior wishlist chart-toppers The Day Before (lol), Manor Lords, and (briefly) Stray gave way to Hollow Knight: Silksong's long reign, so too has Team Cherry's platformer passed the torch to a new contender. Subnautica 2 is now the most wishlisted game on Steam, followed by Valve's MOBA-shooter Deadlock. Slots three through five are taken up by Battlefield 6, Borderlands 4, and Light No Fire.

Steam's publicly available data isn't the end-all, be-all of the hobby⁠—not the least because it doesn't account for other storefronts or console players⁠—but it is useful for divining trends and getting a snapshot of the current gaming scene.

It's kind of weird that the two most desired PC games of the moment [[link]] are such basket cases, right? They boast pre-release anti-hype cycles to give the long Silksong silence a run for its money, yet we apparently can't get enough of them.

Let's start with Deadlock: Given the fact that it's an honest-to-god new Valve game, it's shocking it hasn't just clinched number one by default. But it's a kookster: The second most wishlisted game on Steam is already being played for free by tens of thousands of people⁠—about 45k at the time of writing, according to SteamDB.

The game is not out, but we're already at a point where lapsed players can have discussions about whether or not to come back to it. Before Deadlock's playtest broke containment, it became the gaming story of the moment despite Valve pretending it didn't even exist.

At the beginning of Summer 2024 (this thing's been around for over a year!), screenshots, gameplay footage, and even datamined information was leaking out of the then-secret playtest like a sieve. Valve finally "announced" the game⁠—really just acknowledged it⁠—last August, and the vast proliferation of invites to the invite-only game has effectively soft-launched it.

That might be the most confounding fact of all: Valve invented the early access model, but won't brand its own, effectively early access game as such. If I'm being honest, I kind of love the chaos of it all, even as I wish the studio would finally tackle a singleplayer game again.

Subnautica subpoena

The number one wishlisted Subnautica 2 has a more familiar, but also troubling story: A falling out and legal clash between senior creative and managerial staff behind the game, one that doesn't seem likely to resolve in time for Subnautica 2's projected 2026 early access release.

Studio Unknown Worlds was acquired by publisher Krafton in 2021, and a sequel to the developer's beloved underwater survival sim, Subnautica, was slated to launch in early access this year. In July, Krafton replaced the senior leadership of the studio: CEO Ted Gill, designer Charlie Cleveland, and co-founder Max McGuire.

The ousted developers say they were terminated unfairly in order to duck paying them a $250 million bonus, and that the game could have still launched in early access this year. Krafton claims the trio dropped the ball, that Subnautica 2 was far behind its agreed-upon early access launch milestones, and that going through with the planned release would have been disastrous.

More than anything, I'm just struck by the anti-charisma of these games and some of their immediate predecessors at the top of the list. A messy lawsuit for Subnautica and a messy not-launch for Deadlock. Silksong gave fans nothing but stony silence for years, and The Day Before seems to have gotten there on accident, much to the detriment of developer Amazing Seasun.

Manor Lords and Stray, while having far less abnormal pre-launches, are still far from traditional blockbusters in character: A hardcore city builder and a moody, meditative indie platformer.

Classico triple-A juggernauts like Borderlands 4 and Battlefield 6 can still make it up there, but that kind of pedigree and budgetary heft isn't the guarantee of success and popularity it used to be. It's of a piece with so many of the biggest [[link]] games in recent years being surprises⁠—Baldur's Gate 3, Balatro, Helldivers 2, REPO, Palworld⁠—and so many old guard publishers like EA and Ubisoft falling on hard times.

Aside from just making a good game and hoping it catches on, nobody seems to have cracked the code for getting people excited about a new release these days. Most devs can't just pull a Silksong and say absolutely nothing while a memetic legend spontaneously develops around their project.