The cozy game boom is the clearest trend on Steam over five years of data

The cozy game boom is the clearest trend on Steam over five years of data | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show Software Movies & TV Codes Coupons Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these RPG ‘We lost things such as physics in games:’ The dev behind my most anticipated RPG thinks players are craving more interactive games, not just ‘moving around in a static 3D environment’ Games The best PC games to play right now Life Sim Starsand Island is the first can’t-miss cozy game of 2026 and it’s already taken over 20 hours from me Sim One of the best-reviewed new games on Steam right now is about feeding raccoons and cryptids with the cosmic, Lynchian oven of your eerie woodland house Roguelike ‘It’s weird in the industry right now’: Cult of the Lamb’s devs still have faith that the indie scene will continue dishing out ‘smash hits’ Games The best laptop games Games The 20 best cozy games on PC that aren’t farm sims Adventure I’m obsessed with detective games, and I think these 9 prove that 2025 was the best year for the genre ever Handheld Gaming PCs The best Steam Deck games Games I played 31 new cozy games this year, and my top 6 picks are all completely different Games The best indie games on PC Games February is surprisingly light on cozy game launches but we’re looking forward to these chill picks you shouldn’t miss Platforms Five new Steam games you probably missed (February 16, 2026) Games My 5 favorite ‘cozy’ games that don’t actually look like cozy games Gaming Industry 30 hidden gems from 2025 to grab before the Steam Winter Sale ends PopularArc RaidersBest PC gearFalloutHelldivers 2PC Gamer Quizzes! Games Life Sim The cozy game boom is the clearest trend on Steam over five years of data News By Jody Macgregor published 16 February 2026 GameDiscoverCo’s data shows the word “cozy” being used in capsule descriptions more and more frequently. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Mooncube Games) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter PC Gamer Get the PC Gamer Newsletter Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. 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Signup + Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo’s new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play. Signup + Every Saturday The Watchlist Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter The GameDiscoverCo newsletter studies how people find the games they play. You may remember the time they analyzed the names of bestselling games on Steam to learn what they had in common. Their latest look at Steam is an in-depth study of keywords in capsule descriptions—the paragraph of summary under the icon on the top-right of a Steam page that tells you it’s “a first-person horror game that combines intense action and adventure elements” or whatever.GameDiscoverCo’s rigorous work has resulted in a spreadsheet of the top 1,000 keywords, filtering out “the” and “but” and so on. While the straight-up list of keywords that occur the most in capsule descriptions isn’t enlightening—the word “game” is at the top, followed by “world”—the list also breaks down keywords used in games that grossed more than $100,000 LTD (life to date), and splits them up by year.Which means we can see the rise of cozy games on Steam quite clearly. As GameDiscoverCo put it, “New games that admit they are cozy in the description went from 0.4% (2022) to 3.1% (2025) for titles that gross >$100k LTD.” That’s a huge change in just three years, an increase of 675%. It lines up with the research our Lauren Morton did using Google search results to see how cozy gaming distinguished itself from “wholesome” in 2021 and then rose above “casual” in 2022. Line goes up, as they say. Related articles The 20 best cozy games on PC that aren’t farm sims My 5 favorite ‘cozy’ games that don’t actually look like cozy games The most surprising cozy game trend this year was the desktop pet renaissance Looking at GameDiscoverCo’s list of keywords from successful games that increased the most in frequency over the last five years, cozy comes in at the top with “solo” not far behind, rising by 450%. As GameDiscoverCo points out, that’s not a boost for singleplayer games, which usually use the word “singleplayer” if necessary. “Solo” is what you say when you’re pointing out that a game can be played “solo or co-op”, “solo or PvE”, and so on. It’s actually a rise in multiplayer, but especially the kind of multiplayer that, like Subnautica 2, needs to reassure solo players they’re welcome too.More tellingly, games with the word “factory” in their summary have gone up 325%, because we sure do love a management sim on PC, while “adult” went up 314%. The keywords “expand” and “shop” have also become mor