Where game engines stand in 2025-2026: Steam and web by the numbers

If you're picking an engine in 2026, a couple of data points help. On Steam, most of what ships is still Unity and Unreal - but the gap between "most games" and "most revenue" is wide. On the web, the mix is different: lighter, often no-code or framework-style tools are taking a big slice.

Steam: games released (2024)

Video Game Insights pulled from a sample of over 13,000 Steam games for The Big Game Engines Report of 2025. By count of titles shipped, Unity dominates - but the long tail is growing.

Engine	Share of releases
Unity	51%
Unreal Engine	28%
Godot	5%
GameMaker	4%
Others (Ren'Py, custom, etc.)	12%

So "what do most devs ship on?" - still Unity, then Unreal, then a big step down to Godot and GameMaker. Godot is the only smaller engine that's grown meaningfully in recent years.

Steam: revenue (2024)

Volume vs. money are two different pictures. Custom in-house engines take the biggest revenue slice (think AAA studios). Unreal, for the first time since 2018, earned more than Unity on Steam.

The report notes that Unreal-powered games, despite being fewer in number, are pulling more revenue than Unity titles for the first time in years. Custom engines still dominate the revenue chart - big-budget studios like Valve, Blizzard, and FromSoftware don't use off-the-shelf tools.

Web: browser games (H1 2025)

Playgama's first Web-based Game Engine Rankings looked at 15,000+ new browser games. Unity dominates here too, but the web-native tools have a much bigger presence.

Construct has been climbing steadily - from about 12% in early 2024 to 15%+ in 2025. Phaser holds its place as the go-to open-source, performance-focused option. On the web, Unity dominates, but no-code and framework-style tools are a bigger part of the story than they are on Steam.

What to take from it

For Steam/PC, Unity and Unreal still define the middle and top of the market. Godot and GameMaker hold a clear indie slice, and Godot's growth rate is the story to watch.

For browser games, Unity leads, and Construct, Cocos, and Phaser are the ones to track if you care about web-first or no-code workflows.

We've added all eight engines to the site so you can compare them head-to-head. All percentages above come from the cited reports. We'll update as new data lands.