While Steam is not the most reliable resource for gauging the global interest in sim racing, it’s great for almost all modern games. The only two modern exceptions, however, don’t need much more info for proper evaluation. In either case, let’s look at the top popular sim racing games on Steam.
The list
The list has been sorted by the monthly average players of the last 30 days. The numbers are concurrent player numbers, meaning the number of players in the game at the same time. So, the “monthly average” of 9352 for Assetto Corsa means that in the past 30 days, at each hour, an average of 9352 drivers were in-game.
What has to be mentioned is that a number of games don’t have very representative numbers. The reason is that these games have been released via different PC storefronts first. These games are iRacing, RENNSPORT, rFactor, GT Legends, GTR, GTR2 and Race WTCC.
Adding additional data, however, presumably only has one big move that would happen. And that would be iRacing to P1.
| Name | Best ever | Best last 6 months | 24-hour peak | Monthly average | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assetto Corsa | 19796 | 18374 | 14620 | 9352 | |
| F1 25 | 16304 | 16304 | 7239 | 4168 | |
| Assetto Corsa Competizione | 12376 | 5448 | 4633 | 2255 | |
| Le Mans Ultimate | 8463 | 8463 | 4919 | 2192 | |
| F1 24 | 13327 | 9788 | 1680 | 1262 | |
| Automobilista 2 | 3896 | 3104 | 1538 | 874 | |
| RaceRoom | 2630 | 1697 | 1387 | 690 | |
| Assetto Corsa EVO | 25752 | 3714 | 777 | 504 | |
| iRacing | 2198 | 2198 | 1519 | 493 | |
| F1 23 | 14512 | 1509 | 471 | 331 | |
| rFactor 2 | 1769 | 752 | 516 | 257 | |
| Project CARS 2 | 6775 | 318 | 180 | 144 | |
| RENNSPORT | 161 | 161 | 101 | 59 | |
| Project CARS | 10688 | 94 | 57 | 38 | |
| Automobilista | 497 | 107 | 85 | 32 | |
| rFactor | 179 | 74 | 44 | 15 | |
| Copa Petrobras de Marcas | 403 | 35 | 16 | 10 | |
| Race07 | 1199 | 27 | 19 | 7 | |
| PISTA | 35 | 28 | 8 | 3 | |
| GT Legends | 34 | 4 | 2 | 1 | |
| GTR | 40 | 3 | 2 | 1 | |
| GTR2 | 25 | 6 | 3 | 1 | |
| Race WTCC | 44 | 3 | 1 | 1 | |
Data from steamdb.info.
Takeaways
Assetto Corsa is still king!
Interestingly, Assetto Corsa has been on a consistent rise recently. The game’s development since 2020 has been nothing other than impressive, mostly thanks to modding. While since 2024, it seems the rise has plateaued, it’s still impressive that an over 10-year-old simulator is still so prevelant.
However, most of these players do not necessarily race in leagues. Alternatively, there are many open-world and track day servers. Therefore, a lot of these drivers are not in active championships. So you might not necessarily meet them on SimGrid or other league platforms.
The battle for the main league platform
While there are many leagues on iRacing, I will consider it primarily used for ranked racing. It has many leagues but two other sims are fighting for the honor of being the league sim.
Both Assetto Corsa Competizione and Le Mans Ultimate have very similar player numbers. Considering the fact that LMU has been released much more recently, it’s a strong showing from ACC. Althought ACC seems to have had stagnant player numbers since mid-2024, shortly after the Nordschleife release. It’s still impressive, how this simulator which seems finished (with Kunos continuing to hint at one last patch) is still this strong. It makes sense, there are many players who enjoy Assetto Corsa Competizione despite its drawbacks.
Compare that to Le Mans Ultimate, which only first released in early 2024. LMU had a sharp decline at first (understandable due to Early Access release hype) but then had a continuous rise. With every update, the game became more populated. And while the average player numbers look similar to just before full release, the trend seems to be going up. This is definitely something that Motorsport Games needs, from a financial and motivational standpoint. Financial for the company and motivational for the employees working hard to bring the game’s vision to life.
Assetto Corsa EVO’s hype sort of … died off for now
Assetto Corsa EVO‘s lifetime playerbase looks like that of a dead game. But that is not because it is. The problem for AC EVO this moment is that it has no online mode yet. While that is the next big thing on Kunos’s todo list, they keep releasing small content packs in the meanwhile.
The content packs may be interesting enough to get a few drivers back to try those out, but nowhere near the numbers of other simulators with active online competition.
I think it’s a fair assumption that as soon as Assetto Corsa EVO receives its online mode, the active playerbase could become very high suddenly.
The battle of the all-round sims
Automobilista 2 and RaceRoom keep battling one another for the role of the “other sim”. While both sims have had impressive rises since 2023 especially, they are still by far not up to the levels of ACC or LMU. Add to that that there are a bunch of people primarily using both these sims as singleplayer experiences. Allegedly, both AMS2 and R3E have a very strong singleplayer community.
Automobilista 2 is, on average, more popular than RaceRoom, still. The advantage it has is that is has, since release, just worked and released great content. Additionally, constant small and medium-sized upgrades help AMS2’s loyal community stay loyal.
RaceRoom had a bit of a more troubled past. Two company insolvencies and handing over the game to, over its life, a completely different team made development problematic. However, in recent months, KW Studios have ramped up communication and upgrade efforts enormously. The recent graphics update and the new online UI helped invigorate the game. Add the classic content RaceRoom seems to be focussing on (like Super Tourers), and no wonder their numbers have been on the rise. While between the covid-induced sim racing hype of 2020 and 2023 the game seemed to be in a downward spiral, that has thoroughly been turned around. The trend since mid-2023 is a constant up which makes the future look bright for RaceRoom.
I have to admit here that my previous opinion on RaceRoom’s player numbers was misguided.
Is RENNSPORT dead before it could fully start?
RENNSPORT seems to be the worry-child of the sim racing industry at the moment. While this esports-focussed sim tried to jump into the esports world head-first, that delivered little traction.
Player reviews on steam are split 50/50 pretty much exactly at the time of writing. Positive reviews praise the graphics and the fact it’s free. Negative reviews criticise the force feedback, microtransactions and poor optimisation.
We’ll have to see whether the upcoming full release (with a swap from F2P to full-priced) can do anything to invigorate the community past the esports drivers.
At least RENNSPORT looks better off than PISTA at the moment, which did receive an update recently allowing players to race against AI. Multiplayer is planned for PISTA, but the same fate may befall them. An end before it could fully start.
Interestingly: some old sims are still kicking!
Let’s think about this for a second. Why are rFactor 2 and Project CARS 2 still doing so well?
Well, strictly speaking, rFactor 2 is still “not finished”. The development team may be fully focussed on continuing LMU development at the moment, there is still no death sentence spoken for rF2. It’s a great modding platform with lots of user-generated content and highly-praised force-feedback and feeling. And it does have some unique content in the BTCC cars.
Project CARS 2, on the other hand, is an interesting case. It still has 144 average players in the last month (more than double that of RENNSPORT) despite being unlisted on Steam. Meaning, the only way to play it is to either have it already or by buying an overpriced steam key on some key vendor platform. I have to commend the game on being still alive, especially considering it is the first sim I ever played and I haven’t had much interest in going back after switching to competitors.
Final takeaways
In general, sim racing seems to be moving up. While some thought that, after the Covid-hype of 2020, sim racing would slowly go down in player numbers, that doesn’t seem to have been the case in the end.
Sim racing is never going to go mainstream, as Joshua Morgan writes in his opinion piece “The Realities Facing The Desire for Racing Sims To Go Mainstream” which, according to Aenore Rose, would also not be a good idea (see “you do not actually want simracing to become mainstream“).
However, a bigger playerbase does come with advantages. And I, for one, am glad that we seem to be moving in that direction.