Even the developers of Steam fave Deep Rock Galactic feel the heat from this year's popular multiplayer games: 'Competition is fierce'
Deep Rock Galactic developer Ghost Ship Games is hard at work on its next game, Rogue Core, which is coming out next year. Based on the enduring popularity of Deep Rock, it'll probably be a hit—but that's not a guarantee in a multiplayer space increasingly squeezed between new games and perennial favorites that have managed to hold onto players for many years now.
"Competition is fierce," Ghost Ship Games director Mikkel Martin Pedersen says. "When we started out making Deep Rock Galactic, I think there were a handful of successful co-op focused games on Steam. Today there are a lot more games there. We definitely feel that there are some really, really good co-op games out there right now. Helldivers 2, obviously, and lately we've seen Arc Raiders do extremely well."
It's getting harder to predict what will pop off or stick around in the PC multiplayer space, which was much less crowded when Deep Rock entered early access in 2018. This year's unexpected smashes like Peak and RV There Yet? belong to a new crop of cheap, casual hangout games that became trendy in 2025. Heck, multimillion-selling Schedule 1 came out this year, too.
Meanwhile, live service games from well-known studios like Remedy's FBC: Firebreak seem more likely to sink without a trace. And while Arc Raiders has indeed hit some very impressive player numbers already, it seems increasingly unlikely that Bungie's Marathon will be able to achieve the same sort of success.
And that's just the high profile stuff. Did you know that a free-to-play Fall Guys-inspired Sonic the Hedgehog game came out on Steam last week? No? Neither did anyone else, it seems.
"There's fierce competition, but on the other hand, I think with the Deep Rock franchise we have our own niche and our own way of doing co-op," Pedersen said.
Ghost Ship's lead game designer Mikhail Akopyan sees that as a strength, too. "We have no plans to try to change up what Deep Rock Galactic is in response to the changing landscape," he said. "Stuff like that is reserved for our future games. Deep Rock is Deep Rock, and the point is to keep it Deep Rock. It's for people who like it, and maybe new people will also come in who will enjoy it. But I think it's very important that that game, it is what it is, and we want to keep it that way. We're proud of it."
2025 games: This year's upcoming releases
Best PC games: Our all-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Best co-op games: Better together