Valve's Steam Chart now includes a live category dedicated to Steam Deck, showing Steam Deck's "Top Played" games for the past week, month, and year. The list tracks changes in rank compared to the previous period and also shows prices and whether the game in question has been verified for Steam Deck. It also displays the sale prices for the 2024 Steam Summer Sale, which is a great way to highlight the deals.

There are no small number of interesting insights to be gleaned: the PC Gamer staff found that both "Hades" and "Hades 2" ranked in the top 10 in both the past week and past month categories, with "Hades 2" beating out many new and fancier games We were quick to note this. The rankings of these two games show that there are meaningful differences between the two roguelike games. Dave the Diver, while admittedly a perfect Steam deck game, is in the top 10 on all three charts.

It's not entirely clear what "Top Played" means exactly, except that it's neither the most played nor the top seller; according to Valve, it's a dual metric that tracks both how many people play it and how long they play it according to the company.

"The metric we use to determine top sales is a combination of unique users and interest, as Hades 2 has only been out for a month, but so many Steam Deck players have named it one of the most played games of the year, It's been lifted in the rankings," Valve's Lawrence Yang told The Verge.

Yang's explanation makes the most sense when looking at last year's chart, which includes the most surprising: the poker-flavored roguelike game Balatro. Despite being released just over three months ago, it ranked 11th on the list of top games played last year. However, anyone who has played Balatro will understand how the weighting of play time contributes to Balatro's ranking. Balatro is so interesting that you could play it all day long and never get bored.

The Steam Deck Top Played can be found on Valve's Steam chart.