The Steam Revenue Report
Estimated gross revenue across every paid game on Steam with at least one review. Uses our tuned per-game sales estimator. Free-to-play titles and demos are excluded.
Outcome Tiers
How every paid Steam game with reviews sorts into commercial outcomes. Tiers extend Chris Zukowski's Bronze/Silver/Gold/Diamond framework upward through Unicorn (~$10M), Mega Hit (~$100M), and Blockbuster (~$1B+).
The Galaxy - every paid game on Steam
Each dot is one paid game with reviews, positioned by release year and estimated lifetime revenue on a log scale. The brightest dots are the top 100 earners - hover over one to see its details. The cloud shape reveals the truth of the Steam economy: a dense floor of games earning almost nothing, and a thin scatter of hits at the top.
The Long Tail - Revenue concentration
Every game as a fraction of the total. The dashed line is a perfectly equal distribution. The gap between the curve and the line is the inequality - for Steam it's extreme.
Percentile Earnings
What est-gross does it take to be in each percentile of paid Steam games?
| 50th (median) | $1,435 |
| 75th percentile | $18,581 |
| 90th percentile | $225,581 |
| 95th percentile | $977,847 |
| 99th percentile | $13,646,743 |
| 99.9th percentile | $196,529,881 |
Annual Revenue by Calendar Year
Estimated revenue earned in each calendar year across all paid Steam games, excluding DLC.
Shape and year-over-year trends are directionally accurate. The current calendar year is a partial year - its bar will keep growing until December.
Release-Year Trends
Median lifetime revenue by release year. The declining trend is real - as Steam's catalog grows faster than its buyer base, the median game earns less over time. Recent years (2024-2026) also haven't fully accumulated long-tail sales yet, so their bars will keep rising with time.
Genre Economics - Which genres pay off?
Percentage of games in each genre that earned at least $100K in estimated lifetime revenue. Sorted by hit rate. A game with multiple genres contributes to each, so genre populations overlap.
The Hit List - Top estimated earners
The highest-earning paid games on Steam by our estimate. Switch tabs to see the top earners for a specific release year.
Showing top 25 of 99,018 tracked paid games.
| # | Game | Released | Price | Reviews | Est. Units | Est. Gross |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Black Myth: Wukong Game Science | 2024-08-19 | $59.99 | 1,214,214 | 36,104,505 | $2,165,909,255 |
| 2 |  Grand Theft Auto V Legacy Rockstar North | 2015-04-13 | $59.99 | 2,082,196 | 29,150,744 | $1,748,753,133 |
| 3 |  Cyberpunk 2077 CD PROJEKT RED | 2020-12-09 | $59.99 | 990,478 | 21,790,516 | $1,307,213,055 |
| 4 |  The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered CD PROJEKT RED | 2015-05-18 | $49.99 | 905,968 | 25,282,828 | $1,263,888,572 |
| 5 |  ELDEN RING FromSoftware, Inc. | 2022-02-25 | $59.99 | 1,159,689 | 20,874,402 | $1,252,255,376 |
| 6 |  Baldur's Gate 3 Larian Studios | 2023-08-03 | $59.99 | 862,918 | 20,710,032 | $1,242,394,820 |
| 7 |  Hearts of Iron IV Paradox Development Studio | 2016-06-06 | $49.99 | 360,472 | 23,791,152 | $1,189,319,688 |
| 8 |  Resident Evil Requiem CAPCOM Co., Ltd. | 2026-02-26 | $69.99 | 187,913 | 15,469,605 | $1,082,651,356 |
| 9 |  Red Dead Redemption 2 Rockstar Games | 2019-12-05 | $59.99 | 930,439 | 14,887,024 | $893,072,570 |
| 10 |  Crimson Desert Enhanced Pearl Abyss | 2026-03-19 | $69.99 | 177,670 | 12,399,705 | $867,824,354 |
| 11 |  BeamNG.drive BeamNG | 2015-05-29 | $24.99 | 425,623 | 33,002,153 | $824,723,803 |
| 12 |  Rust Facepunch Studios | 2018-02-08 | $39.99 | 1,408,544 | 19,719,616 | $788,587,444 |
| 13 |  Call of Duty® Treyarch, Raven Software, Beenox, High Moon Studios, Sledgehammer Games, Infinity Ward, Activision Shanghai, Demonware | 2022-10-27 | $69.99 | 788,962 | 11,045,468 | $773,072,305 |
| 14 |  DayZ Bohemia Interactive | 2018-12-13 | $49.99 | 472,082 | 13,218,296 | $660,782,617 |
| 15 |  HELLDIVERS™ 2 Arrowhead Game Studios | 2024-02-08 | $39.99 | 1,174,389 | 16,441,446 | $657,493,426 |
| 16 |  Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI Firaxis Games, Aspyr (Mac), Aspyr (Linux) | 2016-10-20 | $59.90 | 380,537 | 10,464,768 | $626,839,603 |
| 17 |  Call of Duty®: Black Ops III Treyarch, Aspyr (Mac) | 2015-11-05 | $59.96 | 234,949 | 9,805,460 | $587,935,382 |
| 18 |  Battlefield™ 6 Battlefield Studios | 2025-10-10 | $69.98 | 376,277 | 8,342,793 | $583,828,654 |
| 19 |  7 Days to Die The Fun Pimps | 2024-07-25 | $44.99 | 402,460 | 12,878,720 | $579,413,613 |
| 20 |  Far Cry® 5 Ubisoft Montreal, Red Storm, Ubisoft Shanghai, Ubisoft Toronto, Ubisoft Kiev | 2018-03-26 | $59.99 | 190,747 | 9,631,160 | $577,773,288 |
| 21 |  Phasmophobia Kinetic Games | 2020-09-18 | $19.99 | 841,809 | 28,332,002 | $566,235,297 |
| 22 |  Ready or Not VOID Interactive | 2023-12-13 | $49.98 | 350,360 | 11,211,520 | $560,351,770 |
| 23 |  Hollow Knight: Silksong Team Cherry | 2025-09-04 | $19.99 | 426,254 | 26,357,940 | $526,895,221 |
| 24 |  Hogwarts Legacy Avalanche Software | 2023-02-10 | $59.99 | 376,480 | 8,282,560 | $496,870,774 |
| 25 |  Split Fiction Hazelight Studios | 2025-03-06 | $49.99 | 128,544 | 9,780,522 | $488,928,295 |
Methodology
For each paid Steam game we compute an estimate using our tuned per-game sales estimator - the same estimator our individual game pages use, so numbers on the Report and any per-game view will always agree.
Prices: tiered cascade of live regional Steam prices (US preferred, EU/UK/AU/BR/JP as fallback with rough FX), then games.price_initial if in a sensible USD range, then a review-count-graduated fallback for delisted classics.
What's included: active paid games with at least one review and a computable price. What's excluded: free-to-play titles (revenue can't be derived from reviews × price), demos, DLC, and games with zero reviews.
Snapshot taken: 2026-10-23 23:51:02 UTC.