Last week’s chart was all about survival, with a hot new launch settling into the top five while an earlier newcomer disappeared entirely. This week there’s no fresh release muscling its way in. What there is, is a seven-year-old favorite that’s exploded back into the top ten.
As always, the very top of the chart hasn’t budged an inch. Steam’s biggest rogue heavyweights remain firmly in control of the top four positions, just as they have been for weeks now. It’s everywhere else on the leaderboard where the real drama continues to unfold, and this week that drama has a very familiar shopkeeper at its center.
As always, these rankings are based on each game’s current position in SteamDB’s Roguelike chart, with non-rogue titles removed where appropriate. While they aren’t a measure of sales or review scores, they offer one of the clearest snapshots of which rogue games Steam players are flocking to right now. Here’s how things stack up this week…
| Rank | Game | Current Players | 24-Hour Peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 1 | The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth | 75,343 | 110,266 |
| 🥈 2 | Slay the Spire 2 | 52,493 | 97,393 |
| 🥉 3 | Don’t Starve Together | 16,774 | 57,350 |
| 4 | ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN | 12,075 | 31,571 |
| 5 | Sephiria | 9,893 | 30,020 |
| 6 | Balatro | 8,778 | 9,189 |
| 7 | Moonlighter | 8,221 | 12,201 |
| 8 | Guildrun Demo | 8,084 | 8,290 |
| 9 | How Many Dudes? | 5,977 | 6,822 |
| 10 | Brotato | 5,859 | 12,342 |
Moonlighter Cashes In on a Free-to-Keep Promotion
Nobody expected 2018’s Moonlighter to be fighting for a top ten spot in 2026, but here we are. The shopkeeper-turned-dungeon-diver has been handed out for free as part of Steam’s Free-to-Keep Promotion, running from August 5th through to August 9th, and players have shown up in numbers the game has never seen before.
That 12,201 24-hour peak isn’t just a recent high, it’s an all-time record for a game that’s spent most of its life ticking along with a small but devoted crowd. The timing is no coincidence either. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is set to leave Early Access on September 2nd, and giving the original away for free is about as effective a piece of pre-launch marketing as it gets.
Whether the game can hold onto any of these new players once the freebie window closes on Sunday is another question entirely, but for now it’s a game with no update, no sale price and no launch hype, simply riding a giveaway straight into the top ten.
Balatro Claws Its Way Back Up the Table
Last week, Balatro was propping up the bottom of the chart in tenth place. This week it’s sitting comfortably in sixth, jumping past both Slay the Spire and Brotato in the process. It’s a reminder that Balatro’s popularity has never really gone away, it simply ebbs and flows depending on what else is competing for attention that week.
With so many newcomers and giveaways shaking things up further down the leaderboard, Balatro’s climb is a rare case of an established game continuing to gain ground. Speaking of…
Sephiria Holds Its Ground
After bursting into fifth place last week off the back of its 1.0 launch, the real test for Sephiria was always going to be whether it could hang on once the initial excitement faded. So far, it’s passing that test. The game holds firm in fifth for a second consecutive week, even as its current player count settles down from launch-week highs.
That’s a very different trajectory to Pass the Fear, which vanished from the top ten entirely the week after its own launch spike. Sephiria still has plenty to prove in the weeks ahead, but staying put at fifth while a giveaway and a resurgent Balatro shuffle the rest of the chart is a solid sign of staying power.
The Heavyweights Still Aren’t Moving
Once again, the top of the leaderboard is exactly where we left it. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth holds first place, Slay the Spire 2 sits second, Don’t Starve Together remains third, and ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN keeps its grip on fourth. That’s three weeks running now without so much as a single change among Steam’s top four rogue games.
It’s a trend that shows no sign of breaking any time soon. New releases and giveaways can shuffle the middle and lower reaches of the chart on a weekly basis, but cracking that top four remains a different challenge altogether.
Slay the Spire Drops Out, While Guildrun Demo Keeps Hanging On
The original Slay the Spire has slipped out of the top ten entirely after spending last week in seventh place, squeezed out as Moonlighter’s giveaway and Balatro’s resurgence both pushed upward. How Many Dudes? and Brotato have also lost ground, dropping to ninth and tenth respectively.
The Guildrun demo, meanwhile, just keeps refusing to leave. Now in its third straight week inside the top ten, the demo has settled into eighth place. It’s yet to become a full release, but it continues to hold its own against far bigger, fully launched titles, and that alone makes it one of the more quietly impressive stories on the chart right now.
We’ll Be Back Next Week
This week the charts have been well and truly shaken up by a seven-year-old game finding an entirely new audience through a well-timed giveaway, and an old favorite in Balatro reminding everyone it’s not going anywhere. Sephiria has shown it can hold a position, and the top four remain as immovable as ever.
The real question now is what happens now Moonlighter’s free window has closed. Will its new players stick around, or will the game fade back out of the top ten as quickly as it arrived? We’ll be back next week to find out, along with whatever else Steam’s rogue charts have in store.