RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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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
Bobble Shop Simulator
July 24
3
Boba Cafe Simulator
July 24
7,523
Bookshop Simulator
July 21
1,378
Car Sales Simulator
July 23
54
Datacenter Simulator
July 21
3
Golf Superstore Simulator
July 23
3
Gym Rat Simulator
July 24
2
Kimbap Heaven Simulator
July 22
23
Mall Together
July 24
1,199
Market Empire Simulator
July 23
4
Model Kit Shop Simulator
July 24
117
Toll Plaza Simulator
July 21
25
Wild West Miner Simulator: First Gun
July 23
86
Waterpump Simulator
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 .
(Image credit: Blood Pact Studios )
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.
(Image credit: PlayWay)
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 Ret...
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