The flood of retail simulators on Steam is nothing new: the trend seemed to land with torrential force in late 2024. But it’s fascinating, to me at least, how many of these things are still being released every week, and how many of them seem to actually reach an audience despite their rudimentary appearance.
Last week, 14 retail sims were released on Steam. I’m being pretty picky with what I class a “retail sim” too. If it’s an idle game with a retail or service industry theme, it’s not included. If it’s a horror game with a retail setting—and there are tons of these, including this week’s Shift at Midnight—they’re not included either. If it’s a puzzle game with retail or service industry themes, like Nothing To Declare, I’m not including it.
No, I’m talking about those unfailingly first-person retail sims that extremely prolific Polish publisher PlayWay seemed to spawn into existence, and which have been copied relentlessly since (including by PlayWay itself). You probably know what I’m talking about: you unpack boxes, operate checkouts, purchase and receive stock. They all kinda look the same. Many are seemingly set on the same eerily quiet street. There is ostensibly a strategic “tycoon” element to most of them, but their focus on menial activities is part of their unusual appeal.
Here’s what released last week, with the record concurrent player number listed for each game, just to get a vague sense of how popular it’s been.
|
Game |
Release date |
Peak concurrent players |
|---|---|---|
|
July 24 |
3 |
|
|
July 24 |
7,523 |
|
|
July 21 |
1,378 |
|
|
July 23 |
54 |
|
|
July 21 |
3 |
|
|
July 23 |
3 |
|
|
July 24 |
2 |
|
|
July 22 |
23 |
|
|
July 24 |
1,199 |
|
|
July 23 |
4 |
|
|
July 24 |
117 |
|
|
July 21 |
25 |
|
|
July 23 |
86 |
|
|
July 21 |
1 |
Of those, Boba Cafe Simulator is overwhelmingly the most popular with over 754 “overwhelmingly positive” reviews. Few professional reviews of Boba Cafe Simulator exist, though I can confirm a PR company has been distributing code. While reviews are scarce, plenty of streamers and YouTubers have played it, and the free demo launched in September has been marginally popular.
Meanwhile, Bookshop Simulator, which launched into 1.0 last week after a stint in early access, definitely looks like the most distinctive of the batch: it has a slightly more stylised presentation compared to the others. It also benefits from not having AI-generated capsule art, which is rife in this genre.
The only other entry to break the 1,000 concurrents mark was Mall Together, whose appeal seems to be the prospect of building a whole mall rather than a single outlet. It’s the only “successful” shop sim from last week to bear an AI disclosure (for capsule art, of course).
What do all three of these more successful sims share at a glance? Not a great deal, aside from support for online cooperative play. I don’t think that’s necessarily the golden ticket: TCG Card Shop Simulator, which is probably among the most popular retail sims on Steam, is singleplayer only, as is Retro Rewind – Video Store Simulator.
If you feel like these things are being doled at on an industrial scale you’re on the right track. Two of the retail sims released last week—Model Kit Shop Simulator and Wild West Miner Simulator: First Gun—were published by the aforementioned PlayWay, which published four games between July 20 and now.
PlayWay is a curious beast. According to SteamDB the publisher has 474 products on Steam, but well over 100 of those haven’t been released yet: there’s lots of TBAs and Soons among the Q1 2027s and vague 2026s. Some of these yet-to-release games don’t seem likely to ever materialise. I mean, unless Train Mechanic Simulator 2025 gets a name change.
This could actually be a tactic, according to industry analyst Simon Carless in his great GameDiscoverCo newsletter. In a 2021 post he theorised that PlayWay announces loads of games but only bothers to actually make them if they amass enough wishlists. Wishlists aren’t public, so it’s hard to tell which of PlayWay’s “announced” games have a high chance of actually releasing, but Low-Budget Repairs and Car Mechanic Simulator 2026 are both listed among Steam’s most wishlisted, so you can probably count on those. PlayWay has announced that the former has passed a million wishlists.
According to Carless, “there is a centralized ideas machine at PlayWay and associated companies. It generates, vets and commissions a large amount of ideas for games, and then works with newer Polish game devs to put them into action.”
I think that’s what most people would call shovelware, and there’s no doubt the majority of the retail sims on Steam are exactly that. But PlayWay does release decent, effortful games like House Flipper 2, Mr Prepper and the Thief Simulator games, and of course, they’re far from the only publisher trading in rapidly turned out retail sims.
It seems like a gamble, albeit a low stakes one: If a publisher or studio announces a retail sim focusing on a yet-to-be-explored specialist niche, maybe it’ll be a winner, maybe it won’t be. If Lava Lamp Shop Simulator fails, maybe Tupperware Shop Simulator won’t. Either way, it’s not like a huge amount of time is put into their development.
That’s likely the tact taken by “Business Tycoon”, the studio responsible for Mall Together, Sporting Goods Shop, Tobacco Shop Simulator and Retail Company Simulator. Good luck finding any information about this so-called “Business Tycoon” studio, but all of their games are published by the ultra-prolific Chinese company Gamersky Games.
There are plenty of small studios not taking the scorched earth approach, such as the creators of Retro Rewind, Blood Pact Studios, and Boba Cafe Simulator’s Caikemi. There is genuine demand for games like this, and evidence of studios putting a lot of love and effort in. But as has always been true in games, where there’s high demand, you can bet on a deluge of rubbish clones.
Top Steam games by revenue (July 14 – 21)
Steam releases its top sellers charts on Wednesdays. Not much of note released late this week, save potentially a spike in pre-orders thanks to the Halo: Campaign Evolved embargo lifting.
|
Rank |
Game |
|---|---|
|
1 |
Counter-Strike 2 |
|
2 |
Palworld |
|
3 |
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced |
|
4 |
Steam Deck |
|
5 |
Marvel Rivals |
|
6 |
Apex Legends |
|
7 |
Warframe |
|
8 |
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu |
|
9 |
Halo: Campaign Evolved |
|
10 |
Meccha Chameleon |
It was pretty obvious that Palworld’s 1.0 launch would catapult it up the top sellers chart but I’m surprised Counter-Strike 2 held out. I’m also surprised the Black Flag remake is still up there. It’s a pretty conservative glow up for a game that’s been super, super cheap for over a decade, but it’s easy to underestimate the continued popularity of Assassin’s Creed games.
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu’s appearance seems to suggest it’s been a pretty quiet week on Steam overall. It released on July 15 and only as a bit less than 1,500 “mostly positive” reviews right now.
Last week’s Steam deep cuts
Offbeat | July 23
Offbeat is about collecting strange instruments, making music with them, and selling the music to buyers with specific demands. Sometimes a customer will want music for a “corporate presentation”, for instance, or a fantasy film. Most appealingly, you’ll actually compose the music in Offbeat in the game’s inbuilt DAW, and you can export the songs as WAV files.
Atomcraft | July 23
At first glance Atomcraft looks like a primitive take on Terraria, but it’s actually a complex and playful building sandbox. Every pixel is “physically and chemically simulated” (kinda like Noita, I guess) which means you can mix the 118 elements towards some very creative results. There’s a demo.
Gurei | July 23
This action-platformer is essentially a boss rush, but you choose the order of the encounters, and each fight grants a new skill. Not only that, a dynamic difficulty system means every encounter is marginally different depending on how early or late you tackle it. The art style feels like a mash-up of Hollow Knight and Cuphead, and the game will likely appeal to the same crowd.
Shift at Midnight | July 23
Another co-op horror game with a retail setting, Shift at Midnight has amassed nearly 1,500 “overwhelmingly positive” reviews this week, so it must be doing something right. You and two friends run a gas station, stock shelves, and serve customers, while taking care to eliminate anyone who looks a bit suspicious. Not sure entirely sure? Better safe than sorry!
Steam review of the week
“10/10. Would sledge hammer a rat to throw its meat at someone drinking gas out of the pump to then 360 a doppleganger before restocking the ramen.”
John Tesco, proving that Shift At Midnight contains multitudes.