A Year of Strange Stories and Strong PC Energy
PC Gamer covers a lot more than just graphics cards and frame rates, but when you look at its most read news stories of 2025, a clear pattern emerges. PC gaming culture, performance, platforms, and the ongoing battle between open PCs and locked down consoles are at the heart of what people cared about this year.
From legendary hardware memes like Crysis to wild Windows bugs and battles over storefront dominance, 2025 was a reminder of why the PC remains such a unique platform. It is messy, it is powerful, and it absolutely refuses to be controlled by any one company.
Hardware, Performance, and the Eternal PC Arms Race
Even in a year dominated by AI drama and industry shakeups, classic PC performance stories still drew huge interest.
MSI grabbed attention by torture testing one of its OLED gaming monitors. The company ran a display continuously for 533 days, seven hours, and 22 minutes. After all that, MSI claimed burn in was basically nonexistent. For PC gamers who still remember CRT ghosts and early plasma burn in, that kind of result is reassuring if you are eyeing an OLED upgrade for your battlestation.
On the software side, Microsoft tried to sell Windows 11 as a massive performance upgrade over Windows 10, claiming that Windows 11 PCs are up to 2.3 times faster. The catch: the comparison was not really Windows 11 versus Windows 10, but brand new CPUs versus much older processors. PC hardware writers were quick to call this out. When you compare a 2024 Intel chip to a 2015 CPU, of course the new system looks faster, but that does not mean the operating system alone is performing miracles. For anyone planning a gaming rig refresh, it was a reminder to look at independent benchmarks, not just marketing slides.
A more nostalgic performance story came from the legendary Crysis series. The original Crysis director Cevat Yerli explained why the game became such an infamous benchmark. Those ultra settings you could not run in 2007 were basically built for future PCs on purpose. The goal was to make sure Crysis would keep looking incredible years later. It worked so well that Can it run Crysis became a defining PC hardware meme. Even Crysis Remastered leaned into it with a graphics preset literally called Can It Run Crysis that no contemporary GPU could handle at 4K 30 frames per second at launch.
At the other end of the spectrum, an old Windows bug delivered one of the funniest performance related stories of the year. Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer revealed that when he ported 3D Pinball Space Cadet from Windows 95 to Windows NT, the new engine just rendered as fast as the hardware allowed. On early machines that was fine. But as CPUs got much faster, Pinball would happily chew an entire core and render at around 5,000 frames per second. It was not exactly a crisis but it was serious enough that another engineer, Raymond Chen, eventually fixed it by adding a frame rate limiter capped at 100 fps. His proudest Windows moment, he joked, was making it possible to kick off a build and still play Pinball at the same time.
Platforms, Stores, and the Power of the PC Ecosystem
Beyond raw performance, several top stories highlighted the growing influence of PC gaming platforms and the fight over who controls where and how we play.
Steam continued to dominate the scene. In 2025 it hit a new record of 40 million concurrent users online at once. That is a population larger than most countries on Earth, and roughly on par with the entire population of Canada. For PC gamers it underlined just how central Valve’s platform has become for multiplayer, modding, and discovery.
That influence was also at the core of a more controversial story. Kaldaien, the modder behind Special K, a powerful tweak and fix tool often called the Swiss army knife of PC gaming, deleted their 20 year old Steam account and published a lengthy anti Valve manifesto. Their complaints ranged from platform control to compatibility over time, such as older Windows 98 era games being effectively broken when the Steam client no longer supports those systems. Not everyone agreed with every detail, but it raised valid questions about what happens when one storefront becomes almost unavoidable.
Meanwhile, Amazon learned the hard way that size and money are not enough to break Steam’s grip. Former Prime Gaming vice president Ethan Evans admitted that across more than 15 years of attempts to compete with Valve, Amazon never cracked the code. Steam is not just a store. It is a social hub, a library, an achievement system, a mod distribution platform, and it simply works. Amazon underestimated how tightly all those pieces fit together for PC players.
Sony’s PlayStation strategy also crossed paths with the PC this year. Former PlayStation Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida finally said the quiet part out loud: putting PlayStation games on PC is almost like printing money. Interestingly he suggested that releasing games on PC does not just expand the audience, it can also funnel new fans back to the console ecosystem when sequels launch. Many PC players would argue the opposite outcome is more likely. If they can get those games on PC, the incentive to buy a console drops. Either way, it shows how crucial the PC audience has become to even the most console focused companies.
On the flip side, Nintendo reminded everyone why so many enthusiasts stick to open platforms. Just ahead of its next hardware generation, the company updated its terms to give itself the right to permanently brick a Switch if it believes you are pirating games or modifying the console. For PC gamers used to freely upgrading, modding, and customizing their rigs, that kind of control is a major turn off. It reinforced a familiar conclusion: PC gaming might be messy, but you own your hardware and you can make it your own.
Why PC Gaming Still Feels Different
Looking across these stories, a theme emerges. PC gaming in 2025 is not just about raw power, although there is plenty of that. It is about choice, flexibility, and a culture that remembers its history, from Can it run Crysis memes to ancient Windows Pinball bugs. It is about platforms like Steam growing so big they rival nations, while still being scrutinized by the very community that made them successful.
It is also about a constant tug of war between openness and control. On one side you have locked down consoles and aggressive terms of service that can kill your hardware if you step out of line. On the other side you have PCs, where you can pick your operating system, your storefronts, your mods, your overclocks, and yes, even play 1990s Pinball at ridiculous frame rates if you really want to.
As 2025 wraps up, those stories explain why the PC remains the platform of choice for so many gamers. It is not perfect, but it is endlessly customizable, often hilariously overpowered, and still the one place where the player is ultimately in charge.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/ai-crysis-lusty-argonians-and-pinball-these-are-our-most-read-news-stories-of-2025/
