70% of the Most Anticipated Steam games Day One Game Pass releases

Seventy prevent of the “Most Anticipated” Steam games are going to be Day One releases on Microsoft's Game Pass subscription service. While they may not be exclusive releases, it shows that Microsoft’s service does seem to be putting a dent into Steam's grasp on the PC digital marketplace.

The report comes from Klobrille on Twitter who, while not exactly the most avid Steam supporter, has listed some of the games that are going to be day one Game Pass releases, which happen to populate the “Most Anticipated” list on Steam.

These include Starfield, Party Animals, Payday 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, ARK II, Cities Skylines II and everyone's most anticipated indie sequel, Hollow Knight Silksong. Personally, we would also list Persona 3 Reload among these, but that would be just our preference.

The ones not in that list are more niche titles such as Manor Lords, indie action 3D adventure Karlson as well as Paradox’s Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, which still might be coming to Game Pass in the future.

Still, there doesn't seem to be a noticeable decrease in Steam users, at least not yet. Since 2017, Steam has grown overtime from 67 million monthly active users, to double that number in 2020 with 120 million.

Clearly, there is still to consider that having a subscription to Game Pass does not guarantee you'll be able to access your favorite game for a significant amount of time. Microsoft is delisting games from the service all the time. In the last two months, titles such as Life is Strange 2, Hearts of Iron IV and Danganronpa 2 were removed.

It remains to be seen if Microsoft's continuing investments in its Game Pass service will actually start to interfere with Steam's dominance of the PC marketplace. Valve's platform is still at the top of the food chain, with almost 11,000 games being released in 2022 alone. While other storefronts such as Epic and GOG do exist, none have been able to take on the King of PC gaming.