Steam Report: Computer Use

Microgenre deep dive beyond the hits including Her Story, NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD, and Hypnospace Outlaw

9000 Dimensions provides independent research and analysis specializing in the Steam market. This is the second of my in-depth reports analyzing emerging microgenres on Steam. Read my first report on Anomaly Horror games. I update my Steam Reports quarterly with new games, data, and up-to-date analysis.

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[August 10, 2025]

Some games have you outrunning the cops to pull off your next big drug deal (Schedule 1), others have you fighting your way from humble beginnings to knighthood in medieval Bohemia (Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2), and still others drop you half-naked into the wilderness to build a fortress against online rivals (Rust). A rare few have you sitting at a desk… using a computer.

This Steam Report covers a microgenre I’m calling Computer Use¹, which includes games stripped down to a tautological state where the core gameplay takes place solely within a computer interface. They range from job sims to idlers, visual novels, dating sims, hacking sims, horror games, and detective games.

Most tap into a 90s or Y2K nostalgia, whether you’re interacting with a riff on the Microsoft digital assistant Clippy in KinitoPet or browsing geocities-like websites in Hypnospace Outlaw. In the bestselling Computer Use game, NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD, the player manages the life and career of a Twitch streamer, but even its interface is reminiscent of Windows 2000, an operating system released 10 years before the live streaming service spun off from Justin.tv.

While most of the Computer Use games are contained to a flat UI, I found the amped up-atmosphere of recent releases s.p.l.i.t. and Dead Letter Dept. particularly appealing with their minimal rooms and first person perspective. The microgenre is well suited for horror and detective/mystery games. Enough time has passed that just the look and feel of a 90s computer interface boasts a similar eeriness to VHS filters and camcorders, common tropes in the analog horror genre.

These games rely on especially strong narrative and thematic direction. Although the visual interfaces can be fairly simple, (the developers of FACEMINER credit a publicly available css library, at least in part, for their UI design) they rely heavily on thoughtful atmosphere and sometimes fully voice-acted dialogue as is the case in Home Safety Hotline.

Shutter Story catches my eye among the yet-to-be-released games. It draws inspiration from the Home Safety Hotline inspection format, presenting players with a photo editing interface to uncover clues about the entity haunting a family. The gameplay is also reminiscent of I’m on Observation Duty, which I wrote about in my previous report.

In contrast to The Exit 8, the top-selling game in my last report, which broke through the bounds of Steam and into Hollywood (or at least the film festival circuit), games in the Computer Use microgenre seem to have a more niche appeal. But, upon closer inspection, some have found relatively massive commercial success, with the top title earning more than eight times The Exit 8’s revenue. In my assessment, these games are much more likely to be adequately priced with many of the games included listed at $9.99 or more.

I would argue this microgenre traces back to 1985 with the aptly named hacking simulator Hacker. Later games like Uplink (2001) further explored the hacker angle. Game designer Christine Love brought the games to the BBS age with Digital: A Love Story (2009). The timeline for my report starts in 2015 with Her Story and Hacknet. I do not include games like SUPERHOT or Buddy Simulator 1984 where the game is only narratively framed as being played inside an in-world computer. I limited my analysis to games that involve the player directly interacting with a computer interface using a keyboard and/or mouse.

Screenshot from Uplink

Let’s dive in…