10. Dead Island
Most Popular RPGs on PC, According to the Steam Leak
Yes, Dead Island is actually an RPG. Each character is essentially a class with his her own unique skills and specialties; the game is full of quests and sidequests, and there’s loot galore. Granted the items you get in Dead Island have the durability of a twig in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but at least there’s a wide variety to choose from, quite a few of which come in several zombie-eviscerating flavors. Even though the game hasn’t quite nailed the zombie survival horror formula, Dead Island is still a a decent game.
Dead Island was dowloaded 4,182,465 times on Steam, and managed to outsell both its sequel Dead Island Riptide and Techland’s other zombie survival game, Dying Light.
9. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition
Most Popular RPGs on PC, According to the Steam Leak
The Witcher 2 is the game that put CD Projekt RED on the map. The studio took all the lessons it learned from the first Witcher game and crafted a sublime RPG experience that challenges the likes of BioWare’s and Bethesda’s greats for supremacy. The game is considered a Polish national treasure, and in 2011, the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk gave then-President Obama a copy of the game as a gift. That would be as if the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave President Trump a complete collection of the works of Akira Kurosawa during his 2017 visit to Japan. You know a game is good when even politicians recognize its brilliance.
While The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition took a while to break one million sales, its popularity has snowballed. According to the Steam leak, the game has 4,585,616 players on Steam. Not bad given the first Witcher game was relatively obscure.
8. Torchlight 2
Most Popular RPGs on PC, According to the Steam Leak
There are plenty of Diablo clones, but how many of them are designed by the people who made the original Diablo games? Torchlight and Torchlight 2 are essentially just Diablo games with a slew of additional features, including the ability to send away pets to sell items, so you don’t have to trek back to town to pawn off all those useless goblin guts. Oh, and Torchlight 2 offers more player freedom than Diablo 3 with more character builds and the option to cool down after a hard day of dungeon delving with some relaxing fishing.
Torchlight 2 just barely missed the five million mark with only 4,963,949 downloads. Personally, I think the release date is to blame. The game came out several months after Diablo 3, so while many argue Torchlight 2 is the better RPG experience, everyone was busy playing and enjoying Diablo 3 when it came out. Thank goodness Torchlight 2 didn’t go the way of Battleborn at least.
7. Fallout: New Vegas
Most Popular RPGs on PC, According to the Steam Leak
Obsidian Entertainment has weird relationship with RPGs. While it has spearheaded several standout games in recent years, including South Park: The Stick of Truth and Pillars of Eternity, it used to predominantly create fantastic sequels to preexisting games. The studio made Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Fallout: New Vegas, which is arguably superior to Fallout 3. Sure, Fallout 3 laid all the groundwork, but New Vegas improved and balanced basically everything, from the VATS system to player freedom. And then there’s survival mode. Who wouldn’t want to turn an RPG about surviving the harsh, irradiated Nevada desert filled with giant tarantula hawks and coyotes with rattlesnakes for heads into a game about doing all that while staying well-fed, rested, and hydrated?
Even though Fallout: New Vegas is an older title, it still has a very respectable 5,222,533 players on Steam. That’s over half its global sales and still more than Fallout 3 sold on Steam.
6. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Most Popular RPGs on PC, According to the Steam Leak
Winner of countless awards and slayer of even more expectations, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt set the bar for RPGs for years to come. The game did what few RPGs have ever done: create an enormous open world brimming with detail and packed with activities, all while maintaining a solid narrative focus and keeping players entertained with side missions that never fail to impress. The Witcher 3 more than earned its accolades and then some.
While I expected The Witcher 3 to make it onto this list, I also expected the game to place higher on it as well. At only 5,479,626 players, the game just barely outsold The Witcher 2 by one million copies (listen to me, acting as though one million is a paltry sum). Given the game has sold well over 33 million copies, you would think its Steam sales would be higher. Maybe most people bought it through CD Projekt RED’s own digital distribution platform, GOG. I know I’m guilty of that.
5. Fallout 4
Most Popular RPGs on PC, According to the Steam Leak
You know, for all of the complaints I’ve heard from players about this game, you would think it would be less popular. Guess it’s true what they say: you can’t trust everything you read on the internet. While Fallout 4 didn’t try to innovate too much in terms of combat, leveling, and skills, the game entered a whole new dimension thanks to its settlement and crafting systems. How better to immerse yourself in a post-apocalyptic world than with mechanics that have you scavenge and build literally everything, especially settlements where you can hang your hat after a hard day of slaughtering giant, irradiated mole rats and mutant crabs? Now you can live out your dreams and be the kleptomaniac who rebuilt human civilization in the way you always wanted to be.
While the game didn’t sell anywhere as much as Bethesda’s other big RPG (more on that later), Fallout 4 still managed to push a respectable 6,601,188 units at least on Steam. Not bad given the game has sold almost 14 million copies worldwide.
4. Path of Exile
Most Popular RPGs on PC, According to the Steam Leak
Have you ever wanted to play Diablo 2 on Steam? Have you ever wanted to play it for free? That’s exactly what Path of Exile is: a free-to-play, dungeon-crawler RPG in the vein of Diablo 2. Path of Exile features plenty of classes, each with his or her unique skills and flavor, but more importantly, the game features something many RPGs seem to lack these days: depth. Sure, the game is long and gets longer by the month thanks to a constant slew of updates, but most of the game’s depth comes from its upgrade systems. Items can be altered a myriad of ways, but the meat of the upgrade system comes from a massive skill tree that twists and turns so much it looks less like a skill tree and more like a map of the New York City subway system.
At 7,634,137 downloads, though, Path of Exile is still a fairly popular title and well worth your time if you’ve ever been interested in trying Diablo (or a Diablo-esque RPG) but were a little worried it would be a waste of time and money.
3. Trove
Most Popular RPGs on PC, According to the Steam Leak
Remember when Minecraft was popular? Ok, stupid question; it still is popular. I think a better question would be do you remember when Minecraft was so popular every developer tried to make the next Minecraft or a Minecraft killer? Well, most of these games have been forgotten or abandoned, but not Trove. This voxel MMORPG has managed to stay in the minds of PC gamers thanks to its simple mechanics and wildly creative classes. Granted, some are the standard warrior, ice mage, and bow-wielding ranger, but Trove also features quite a few unique and quirky classes like a spear-throwing fox, a dinosaur tamer, and an obvious love letter to Link from The Legend of Zelda. And yes, Trove also lets you build fantastic, blocky displays, just like Minecraft.
Trove just barely, barely squeaked by into third place with 7,700, 319 players, a measly 100,000 more downloads than Path of Exile. But then again, Trove is a free-to-play game, so players don’t exactly have to spend any money on this title. Well, so is Path of Exile, but that game isn’t exactly kid friendly/accessible, which gives Trove a distinct advantage and the excuse to create a class that is essentially a berserker hopped up on all the Halloween candy on the planet.
2. Borderlands 2
Most Popular RPGs on PC, According to the Steam Leak
FPS games sell really well on Steam. Seven out of the ten most popular titles mentioned in the leak are FPS games, including Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, PAYDAY 2, and Paladins. Of course, most of these FPS games are about either competing against other opponents or completing small missions, but Borderlands 2 is a tad different. The Borderlands franchise is all about mixing FPS combat with RPG mechanics. Special abilities, quests, super-bosses, and most importantly, sweet loot. While the first Borderlands is a little rough around the edges, Borderlands 2 is the ultimate combination of FPS gunplay, RPG mechanics, and comedy.
At 11,218,936 players, Borderlands 2 beats out many other popular games, but is just barely overshadowed by Grand Theft Auto V. The most likely explanation for Borderlands 2’s popularity is its multiplayer. Unlike most RPGs, players can team up with their friends to beat down some titanic bosses and fill the screen with every kind of explosion imaginable. Nothing like a bit of multiplayer mayhem to bump up some sales numbers.
1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Most Popular RPGs on PC, According to the Steam Leak
Well, this came as no surprise. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the game Bethesda just won’t let die. It has been remastered, ported to the Nintendo Switch, and transformed into a VR experience — and for good reason. Skyrim is full of wondrous locales to explore and quests to take on . Plus, the story makes you feel like a bad ass as you slay dragons, decide the fate of the land, and steal as many Sweetrolls as possible without ever getting caught. And we can’t forget about all the mods — the beautiful, horrible, mind-melting mods that have kept the game going for over half a decade with everything from new quests to chainmail bikinis. Of course Skyrim was going to be the number one RPG on PC.
Now, I’m fudging the numbers a bit here because technically the Steam leak included two versions of Skyrim: the vanilla version and the Special Edition with all the DLC and remastered graphics. Since they are just different versions of the same game, I’m going to count them as one. While the Special Edition sold at least 4,398,897 copies, vanilla Skyrim had an astonishing 13,235,488 copies downloaded, bringing the total number up to a whopping 17,634,385. This makes Skyrim technically the 8th most popular game on Steam, right between Garry’s Mod and Warframe.
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