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) | $1,138 |
| 75th percentile | $12,388 |
| 90th percentile | $149,599 |
| 95th percentile | $538,873 |
| 99th percentile | $9,038,672 |
| 99.9th percentile | $151,755,591 |
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 121,313 tracked paid games.
| # | Game | Released | Price | Reviews | Est. Units | Est. Gross |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Black Myth: Wukong Game Science | 2024-08-19 | $59.99 | 1,209,343 | 31,442,918 | $1,886,125,895 |
| 2 |  Grand Theft Auto V Legacy Rockstar North | 2015-04-13 | $59.99 | 2,075,820 | 29,061,480 | $1,743,398,185 |
| 3 |  Call of Duty® Treyarch, Raven Software, Beenox, High Moon Studios, Sledgehammer Games, Infinity Ward, Activision Shanghai, Demonware | 2022-10-27 | $69.99 | 780,593 | 24,444,850 | $1,710,895,051 |
| 4 |  Hearts of Iron IV Paradox Development Studio | 2016-06-06 | $49.95 | 375,678 | 27,048,816 | $1,351,088,359 |
| 5 |  Cyberpunk 2077 CD PROJEKT RED | 2020-12-09 | $59.97 | 976,754 | 21,488,588 | $1,288,598,994 |
| 6 |  ELDEN RING FromSoftware, Inc. | 2022-02-24 | $59.98 | 1,151,994 | 20,735,892 | $1,243,834,506 |
| 7 |  Baldur's Gate 3 Larian Studios | 2023-08-03 | $59.99 | 855,433 | 20,530,392 | $1,231,530,229 |
| 8 |  The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt CD PROJEKT RED | 2015-05-18 | $39.95 | 885,781 | 24,760,600 | $989,185,970 |
| 9 |  Red Dead Redemption 2 Rockstar Games | 2019-12-05 | $59.96 | 912,281 | 14,596,496 | $875,205,900 |
| 10 |  BeamNG.drive BeamNG | 2015-05-29 | $24.99 | 416,437 | 32,666,809 | $816,261,890 |
| 11 |  Rust Facepunch Studios | 2018-02-08 | $39.98 | 1,394,772 | 19,526,808 | $780,681,784 |
| 12 |  Palworld Pocketpair | 2024-01-19 | $29.99 | 482,485 | 25,218,420 | $756,192,337 |
| 13 |  DayZ Bohemia Interactive | 2018-12-13 | $49.98 | 468,441 | 13,306,440 | $665,055,871 |
| 14 |  HELLDIVERS™ 2 Arrowhead Game Studios | 2024-02-08 | $39.99 | 1,159,559 | 16,233,826 | $649,136,589 |
| 15 |  Monster Hunter Wilds CAPCOM Co., Ltd. | 2025-02-27 | $69.98 | 328,883 | 9,208,724 | $644,391,425 |
| 16 |  Far Cry® 5 Ubisoft Montreal, Red Storm, Ubisoft Shanghai, Ubisoft Toronto, Ubisoft Kiev | 2018-03-26 | $59.93 | 188,861 | 10,029,170 | $601,081,589 |
| 17 |  Call of Duty®: Black Ops III Treyarch, Aspyr (Mac) | 2015-11-05 | $59.97 | 232,740 | 9,687,016 | $580,927,414 |
| 18 |  7 Days to Die The Fun Pimps | 2024-07-25 | $44.98 | 399,928 | 12,797,696 | $575,663,635 |
| 19 |  Phasmophobia Kinetic Games | 2020-09-18 | $19.99 | 838,262 | 28,498,081 | $569,554,505 |
| 20 |  Battlefield™ 6 Battlefield Studios | 2025-10-10 | $69.99 | 365,013 | 8,093,048 | $566,432,430 |
| 21 |  Ready or Not VOID Interactive | 2023-12-13 | $49.98 | 344,263 | 11,016,416 | $550,600,472 |
| 22 |  Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI Firaxis Games, Aspyr (Mac), Aspyr (Linux) | 2016-10-20 | $59.90 | 378,387 | 8,324,514 | $498,638,389 |
| 23 |  Hogwarts Legacy Avalanche Software | 2023-02-10 | $59.90 | 371,915 | 8,182,130 | $490,109,587 |
| 24 |  It Takes Two Friend's Pass Hazelight Studio | 2021-05-25 | $29.99 | 267,562 | 14,983,472 | $449,354,325 |
| 25 |  New World: Aeternum Amazon Game Studios | 2021-09-28 | $59.99 | 297,046 | 7,304,216 | $438,179,918 |
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: 2026-09-01 08:46:25 UTC.