Punks are taking over Steam starting on October 9 with the Punk Games Showcase, a week-long, curated digital festival celebrating games made with and expressing a punk spirit. 

Over 400 games were submitted for consideration, and the final list includes over 100, with the intention of filtering out any that included generative AI, among other factors. Many featured games have already been released, while others are still to come. A few of them are even out this month or during the event.

I'm still digging through the lengthy list of games that will be featured, but a few that have my heart include:

Brad Smith of studio Miracle Tea, the creators of Club Soko, has been involved in itch.io's Hardcore Punk Jam since 2018, and is organizing the Steam showcase that will run alongside the game jam's latest edition.

Smith said the showcase has a few simple goals: to highlight games that "feature this style of music, are about the subculture, or are from creators who understand this scene, and it shows significantly in their games." He also hopes the showcase will influence Valve to add a "punk" categorization label on Steam, so developers can tag their games accordingly and players can find them more easily.

I caught up with Smith for more insight into the upcoming showcase and the movement to uplift games that wear their punk roots. 

Brad Smith: With 443 games submitted, it was tough to curate, but I did my best. I basically had to create arbitrary categories to help lock in a decision, which looked like: Does this game have punk music, or is it about punk culture?

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