The median revenue of games on Steam has been declining for 12 consecutive years

Featured 01.09.2026 19:37

01.09.2026 19:37 Alexander Semenov

Published by Alexander Semenov

Tags:

• Totally Human Media,
• We Love It

For titles released in the year 2026, the revenue stands at $1,728. This is more than ten times less than in 2016.

On the We Love It website, which serves as an alternative tool for searching games on Steam, a comprehensive study was published regarding the state of affairs in the store.

According to the published data:

• half of all games ever released on Steam earned less than $3,558;
• the Gini coefficient is 0.984% (a statistical measure of distribution often applied to society; the closer to 1%, the greater the level of inequality);
• 1% of all games in the store account for 84.6% of the earnings;
• 5% of games account for 96.91% of the revenue;
• 10% account for 98.81% of the total revenue;
• 60.7% of games earn less than $10,000;
• only 14.4% of all game titles can expect revenue exceeding $100,000;
• the Steam games catalog is growing faster than the store’s total revenue;
• as of September 1, 17.2 thousand games were released on Steam in 2026, compared to 23 thousand for the entire previous year;
• revenue decreases year by year: a game released in 2016 earned about $15,000 on average, whereas a game released in 2026 earns much less, around $1,728;
• the highest hit rate (the share of projects whose revenue reaches the $100,000 mark) are in the genres of sandbox (27.3%), FPS (21.6%), and RPG (19.4%);
• the lowest median earnings are in racing, puzzle, arcade, and platformer games (around $1,000 or less).

The research was conducted by:

• Ichiro Lambe, CEO of Totally Human Media, previously worked at Valve where he was responsible for Steam Labs;
• Matt Martindale, Marketing Director at Totally Human Media;
• Timofey Ermilov, Technical Consultant, co-founder of startups Hyperflow and DataBorg.

Tags:

• Totally Human Media
• We Love It