Steam's new game revenue is 10x higher than it was 10 years ago, but only around 200 made more than $1 million in their first 30 days

The Steam logo on a blue background.
(Image credit: Valve)

Steam is making more money than ever, but before you go and develop your own game, you should know that only around 500 games made more than $250,000 in the month after their release, so not everyone is getting rich quick.

According to Steam's 2024 year in review which was just published, the company is now generating ten-times more revenue than it was in 2014 on new releases alone. The way it calculates new release revenue is by looking at the total figure in the 30 days after a game is launched on the platform, plus pre-order cash.

An important caveat to note is that only the first date a game is made available counts. So, when something launches into early access, the new release revenue is calculated in the following 30 days; the 1.0 release doesn't count as a new data point.

This is certainly good news for developers, but 18,908 games were released on Steam last year according to SteamDB, which means just 2.6% of them made more than $250,000 in their first month, and around 200 games made more than $1 million in their first 30 days, which is just 1%.

Obviously, many games have a long tail and keep generating income after their initial releases, but for studios with tight margins, it's a tough market. However, if you're a solo developer and you manage to make it into that top 500, you should consider yourself very successful.

Insomniac's retiring CEO says games are riskier to make these days due to how much time and money they cost to make, and Steam's figures seem to corroborate that. Still, every now and then, you get a breakout hit like Balatro selling over $600,000 worth of copies in its first few hours on Steam.

While you're here, check out our list of the best games on Steam and see if there's any you want to play.

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Issy van der Velde
Contributor

I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.

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