While the price of virtually every computer component has skyrocketed (including HDDs, as we discussed earlier), Valve‘s digital platform remains unstoppable.

Overall, 2025 was a mixed year, but as far as games are concerned, it was positive. Perhaps we haven’t had a chance to try out the year’s hits yet. We are certainly not alone in this, which is perhaps why the analytics company Alinea Analytics claims that December 2025 was Steam‘s most profitable December to date. The company added that more than 100 million Steam users generated $1.6 billion in gross revenue last month. This figure is 22.7% higher than in December 2024 and surpasses the $1.4 billion peak in December 2020, during the height of the pandemic.

Arc Raiders became the second highest-grossing game of the season. Counter-Strike 2 remained at the top, with Valve pocketing a considerable amount of money month after month. Between December 21 and January 4, Arc Raiders sold an astonishing 1.2 million copies, bringing its total sales to over 12 million. An estimated 250,000 copies were sold on Boxing Day alone, with nearly 3.2 million players logging in, half of whom accessed the game on Steam.

Despite potential competitors such as the Epic Games Store and occasional controversies, Steam seems bigger than ever. Embark Studios has dispelled concerns that extraction shooters aren’t appealing enough to everyday gamers with Hullcracker. Steam‘s continued dominance is unsurprising; it has a larger user base than Canada’s population, so it’s only a matter of time before Gabe Newell invests in another yacht.

However, this is strange considering that memory, video cards, SSDs, power supplies, and essentially all components have become or will become more expensive during the year, making our empty wallets cry for help at one point.

Source: PCGamer, Alinea Analytics