Steam shared information on developer earnings in 2019. Take this with a pinch of salt as Valve’s storefront might have slightly manipulated the stats in its favor.
1) The number of games with revenue over $10,000 in the first two weeks since launch was up 18% from 2018.
2) Titles generating $10,000 in the first two weeks typically earn between $20,000 and $60,000 over a year on Steam;
3) Since 2013, the number of games earning over $10,000 in the first two weeks has tripled.
That’s the “pinch of salt” part. According to Steam Spy, in 2013, 507 games were released on Steam vs 8,128 in 2019. That’s a 16-fold growth. Which means that percentage-wise, fewer titles meet the $10K benchmark on Steam.
4) Steam also notes that the introduction of Steam Greenlight allowed the platform to more than double the number of successful games. Kind of.
“While we can’t say for sure, we think the green portions of the bars above the dashed line are, largely, games that would never have previously found success on Steam… because they never would have been released on the platform at all,” says the report.
5) In 2019, in the first two weeks since release around 1,480 titles earned over $5,000; about 680 crossed the $50,000 threshold; 435 projects generated more than $100,000; and 280 games brought in over $250,000 in revenue.