Most Played Drifting Games On Steam – July 2025

In June, we began our monthly breakdown of the most popular drifting games on Steam. We’re back again to check out how things have changed this month, and there’s no shortage of surprises.

Given that the Steam Summer Sale ended on July 10, another offering followed shortly after – Steam Racing Fest.

Racing Fest ran from July 28 to August 4, offering up to 93% discounts on some of the most popular drifting games, undoubtedly having a heavy influence on the sales outcomes during the period.

Popular Steam Drifting Games – July 2025

If you’re wondering why some games are/aren’t included, we recommend scrolling down to the sections below, where we explain our reasoning.

Admittedly, not every title is a “pure” drifting game, but they’re all popular with drift enthusiasts and often support drift mods or content. For instance, we’ve included some rally games because they help develop transferable sideways skills.

We’ve also focused solely on Steam data since accurate monthly player counts for consoles and other platforms aren’t readily available.

Here’s how things shifted in July:

The Reasons Behind July’s Biggest Shifts

Here are the notable changes, along with the likely reasons behind the biggest changes.

Steam Summer Sale And Racing Fest Had A Huge Impact

Steam’s ‘Summer Sale’, followed by ‘Racing Fest’, delivered some of the craziest discounts we’ve ever seen on popular drifting games throughout the period.

The Crew Motorfest

Motorfest emerged as July’s biggest winner with a massive 73% jump in average players. Season 7 dropped on July 2 with 17 new cars, led by the Ferrari F80 hypercar, along with a Ferrari-themed museum playlist.

When Racing Fest offered an 80% Steam discount (its lowest price ever), those moves combined drove a sharp uptick in sales from drift and racing fans.

Need For Speed Heat/Unbound

Both Heat and Unbound saw record price slashes during Steam Racing Fest at 93% off, driving a surge in purchases and player activity without relying on any new gameplay updates.

There are also strong rumors that the Need For Speed series is likely to be axed entirely, which would’ve also helped.

With these factors considered, Heat climbed 18.91% while Unbound jumped 18.60%.

CarX Street

CarX Street continued its momentum from June with another 50.79% increase.

The game received update 1.7.2 on July 11, introducing experimental driving assist options, FOV settings for third-person cameras, and improved tire physics.

The recent CarX Street console releases would’ve also played a role in providing increased exposure.

Early Access Struggles Continue

JDM: Japanese Drift Master

Unfortunately, JDM took another beating, dropping 53.88% to just 219 average players.

The decline comes as they prepared for their biggest update yet – Patch 1.6.0 featuring Physics 2.0 with ground-up reworked driving mechanics, force feedback overhaul for wheel users, and a new Honda NSX NA1 (1992).

Does it live up to expectations? You can find out here.

Assetto Corsa EVO

AC EVO continues to slide, dropping another 15.11% to 205 average players.

Recent delays won’t help the situation either. Meanwhile, its predecessor, the OG Assetto Corsa, is still maintaining its spot in the top five.

Some positive news surfaced (not from Kunos), with the first signs of a mod manager for EVO, but there’s still a long way to go until it’ll be competing with the original.

Tokyo Xtreme Racer

An Early Access game that managed to impress was Tokyo Xtreme Racer, which saw a 23.61% bump with recent significant updates bringing several highly requested features.

TXR seems to be on schedule as it prepares for its full release, and the steady improvements from the team have been much appreciated by the fans

Could This Be The Start Of GTA V’s Decline?

Despite still dominating the charts, both versions of GTA V saw modest declines. Legacy dropped 3.93% and Enhanced fell 8.24%.

After nearly 12 years, it seems even GTA can’t maintain infinite growth. It appears that fans are finally growing increasingly impatient waiting for GTA VI, which is delayed until May 2026.

Why These Aren’t All Purely Drift-Focused Games

We appreciate that not all of these are full-blown “drifting games.” However, they’re games that are typically played by fans of drifting, and given that they’re on PC, many of them have drifting mods available.

Take Grand Theft Auto V and BeamNG.drive, for example. Both continue adding drift content (GTA V just dropped the Money Fronts DLC in June, while BeamNG keeps rolling out drift-focused updates). Again, these aren’t typical drifting games, but it’s great to see they’ve both significantly improved their drifting support over time.

We’ve also included some rally-focused games for similar reasons, as they’re games we enjoy that have helped us improve our drifting skills over the years. If you’re looking for games that’ll improve you as an overall sim driver, these are awesome.

Similarly, while Tokyo Xtreme Racer‘s drifting capabilities remain almost non-existent, it has been one of the most popular games among drifting fans here at Drifted, given the close ties to the Japanese/JDM/retro scene.

Wreckfest and its recent sequel, Wreckfest 2, have also incorporated a growing number of drift cars over time. They also both feature drift-friendly physics and limited-slip differential settings for tail-happy action.

Some Games Are More Popular On Other Platforms

A perfect example is Forza Horizon 5, which was designed for consoles. It’s been hugely popular among Xbox players in recent years and has also experienced incredible sales figures after its recent (controversial) PlayStation release.

On the other hand, games like Assetto Corsa offer a far superior experience on PC, thanks to the modding community, which completely transforms the game. Given this, it has far more players on Steam than it does on consoles.

At the same time, games like BeamNG.drive aren’t available on consoles, which also helps boost their Steam popularity.

There are also other alternatives for PC players beyond Steam, such as Epic Games, EA Play, and GOG.

Given that we’re unable to source accurate monthly playing data for other platforms (consoles, Play Store, iOS, etc.), this is the most accurate data we have found that confirms the most popular content.