PC Gamer Readers' Top 100 list

Every year PC Gamer's editors and contributors vote on a list of the 100 best PC games to play right now, and every year our Top 100 list is contentious. A game is always too low, and another too high, and another unbelievably missing. Such is the inevitable fate of any List Of Things In A Certain Order.

But this year, we decided it would be fun to transform the heated comment threads under our list into a list of their own—the Readers' Top 100. Last week, I asked you to pick your top two games from our Top 100 list, and suggest two games to add. I then compiled the votes (1,445 of them), weighing the write-ins more highly than the picks from our list, given that it's much more likely that 50 people would chose the same game from a list of 100 than all write in the same game.

My totally unscientific method does cause a few problems, namely: how much more do you weigh the write-in votes? A multiplier of three produced the most interesting list in this case, though next year I may ditch that tactic all together and take write-ins only. The danger is that a write-in-only list might be more easily swayed by organized campaigns (though that certainly happened anyway), and for this first attempt, I wanted to include a baseline to build off of just in case the suggestions were too scattered, or too homogeneous.

It worked out pretty well despite the uneven, improvised methodology—but do think of it as a fun exercise and not a perfect representation of PC gamers' tastes. Caveats out of the way, check out the list below. (Games that aren't on our Top 100 list are in bold.)

The PC Gamer Readers' Top 100

1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
2. Half-Life 2 
3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 
4. Dark Souls 
5. Borderlands 2 
6. Fallout: New Vegas 
7. Mass Effect 2  
8. Doom (2016) 
9. BioShock 
10. Doom 2 
11. Fallout 2 
12. Deus Ex 
13. Portal 2 
14. Life is Strange 
15. Starcraft 
16. Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn 
17. Grand Theft Auto 5 
18. League of Legends 
19. Diablo 2 
20. XCOM 2 
21. Fallout 4 
22. Dragon Age: Origins 
23. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 
24. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds 
25. Bioshock Infinite 
26. Overwatch 
27. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 
28. World of Warcraft 
29. Rimworld 
30. Path of Exile 
31. Planescape: Torment
32. Fallout 
33. Dishonored 2 
34. Crysis 
35. Stellaris 
36. Crusader Kings 2 
37. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 
38. Dishonored 
39. Half-Life 
40. Warcraft 3 
41. Quake 
42. Factorio 
43. Prey 
44. SOMA 
45. Fallout 3
46. TIE Fighter 
47. Elite Dangerous 
48. Rocket League 
49. Civilization 5 
50. Heroes of Might and Magic 3 
51. Starcraft 2 
52. Nier: Automata 
53. Stalker: Call of Pripyat 
54. Wolfenstein: The New Order 
55. Minecraft 
56. System Shock 2 
57. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 
58. Psychonauts 
59. Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition 
60. Knights of the Old Republic 
61. Age of Empires 2 
62. Thief 2 
63. Endless Legend 
64. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 
65. Titanfall 2 
66. Warframe 
67. The Secret of Monkey Island  
68. Kerbal Space Program 
69. Europa Universalis IV 
70. Hotline Miami  
71. Payday 2 
72. Battlefield 1 
73. Dota 2 
74. Total War: Warhammer 
75. Mass Effect 3 
76. Batman Arkham City 
77. Rainbow Six Siege 
78. FTL 
79. Stardew Valley 
80. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 
81. The Talos Principle 
82. Tyranny 
83. Civilization 6 
84. Undertale 
85. Knights of the Old Republic 2 
86. Team Fortress 2 
87. The Witness 
88. Thief Gold 
89. Arma 3 
90. Dying Light 
91. Alien: Isolation 
92. Hyper Light Drifter 
93. Planet Coaster 
94. Jagged Alliance 2 
95. Call of Duty 2 
96. Transistor
97. Mass Effect 
98. Freespace 2 
99. 7 Days to Die 
100. Ultima Online

For reference, the top 10 games on our list this year were: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Dark Souls, Dishonored 2, XCOM 2, Portal 2, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Mass Effect 2, Alien: Isolation, Doom (2016), and Spelunky. If you want a condensed sense of how our tastes differ from those surveyed, here are a few observations:

We like Spelunky a lot more than everyone else. It was in our top 10, but didn't even make it into the Readers' Top 100.

While Half-Life 2 has lost some stock in our minds, it hasn't in everyone's. It was 11th on our list, but 2nd on the Readers' list.

Everyone agrees that The Witcher 3 is great. It was first on both of our lists.

Skyrim is still chugging along. It was 26th on our list, but came in third in reader voting.

Borderlands 2 wasn't on our list, but came in 5th. Did Borderlands fans came out en masse, or are we just weird for not putting it on our list?

14th place is pretty impressive for Life is Strange. Rimworld ranked pretty high, too. Either these games are more popular than we realized, or the survey happened to be circulated among their biggest fans. Probably a mix of both.

League of Legends fans showed up to challenge our preference for Dota 2. It came in at 18, while Dota 2 was knocked down to 73. Justice?

If you'd like to compare the lists directly, I've put them side by side in a spreadsheet. Thank you to all 1,445 people who responded to the survey! Feel free to suggest new ways to compile this list in the comments, and I'll take them into consideration next year. My skill with Excel spreadsheet formulas is at least double what it was last week, a cursed power that will only have grown by next year.