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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