August 2026 - in progress, updated by the scheduled run
This page freezes when the month closes. Counted on 27 Aug 2026.
1,400 indie games released on Steam in August 2026 through day 26
Up 93% against August 2025 (725, same day range).
What moved this month
Written from the week-by-week history, with thresholds: a genre appears only when its move clears both an absolute and a relative bar. A quiet month is meant to read as a short section, not as manufactured drama.
Nothing crossed the thresholds this month. History is still building: 2 weeks of snapshots so far, and month-on-month findings need at least two months.
Releases per quarter, by genre
Last 8 complete quarters. All 18 tiles share one y scale (0 to 929 releases), so tile heights are comparable across genres. The number beside each genre is its most recent complete quarter. A flat stub means the quarter could not be measured, which is not the same as zero.
The 18 genres, slowest-filling first
"Filling" is announced upcoming games as a share of games already released. High pressure is not automatically bad and low pressure is not automatically good - a pocket can be filling because it is hot, or calm because it is dying.
| Genre | Games | Releases last quarter | Filling | Typical owners | Typical reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Puzzle Platformer | 4,223 | 2482026 Q2 | 12% | 10,000 | 20 |
| Open World | 6,901 | 3932026 Q2 | 17% | 35,000 | 126 |
| Visual Novel | 6,195 | 4612026 Q2 | 17% | 10,000 | 52 |
| Survival | 7,379 | 5162026 Q2 | 17% | 10,000 | 38 |
| Souls-like | 1,554 | 882026 Q2 | 17% | 10,000 | 52 |
| Horror | 10,896 | 8022026 Q2 | 18% | 10,000 | 46 |
| Bullet Hell | 3,738 | 4032026 Q2 | 20% | 10,000 | 20 |
| Metroidvania | 1,461 | 682026 Q2 | 21% | 10,000 | 48 |
| City Builder | 1,755 | 1442026 Q2 | 22% | 10,000 | 79 |
| Tower Defense | 2,133 | 1912026 Q2 | 23% | 10,000 | 23 |
| Tactical RPG | 1,589 | 1122026 Q2 | 25% | 35,000 | 39 |
| Immersive Sim | 3,564 | 4622026 Q2 | 32% | 10,000 | 34 |
| Roguelike | 5,442 | 7512026 Q2 | 36% | 10,000 | 34 |
| Farming Sim | 922 | 1112026 Q2 | 39% | 10,000 | 50 |
| Idler | 1,648 | 4742026 Q2 | 55% | 10,000 | 24 |
| Auto Battler | 720 | 1712026 Q2 | 63% | 10,000 | 30 |
| Deckbuilding | 1,366 | 2872026 Q2 | 66% | 10,000 | 43 |
| Cozy | 779 | 2522026 Q2 | 116% | 10,000 | 60 |
Methodology and caveats
- Data counted on 27 Aug 2026 (UTC), covering August 2026 through day 26. This month is still running, so the figures can still change until it closes.
- Release counts come from Steam's own store search: the Indie tag, games only, sorted by release date. Year-on-year uses the same day range in both months.
- Per-genre release counts per quarter are real counts from store search, not a sample. A quarter we could not measure is left blank rather than drawn as zero, because zero and unknown look identical and mean opposite things.
- Typical-game owners and reviews are medians of an even sample spread across the whole ranked list for the genre, so the long tail is represented and not just the head. Where too few games in a genre have measurable owner data, the figure is withheld rather than printed: the surviving few are the biggest games and their median reads far higher than what a new game there should expect.
- Owner figures are SteamSpy estimates, so treat them as a relative footprint, not a precise number. Wishlist counts are not public on Steam.
- Findings are generated from the weekly snapshot history with fixed thresholds (2 weeks available for this report), so absence of a finding means no move large enough to report.