Unlike the mobile market, tracking downloads and revenue of free-to-play games on PC is nearly impossible due to a lack of data. But discoverability expert Simon Carless has tried to analyze the current state of the F2P segment on Steam.

top free-to-play games on Steam have median revenue of $1.8 million and 763k players, according to GameDiscoverCo

Summoners War: Chronicles

In a recent GameDiscoverCo newsletter, Carless shared his findings based on a list of the top 30 new free-to-play releases on Steam of the last 12 months, sorted by estimated player count, gross revenue, and other metrics.

“Some of this data is a little ‘experimental and incomplete,” Carless noted. Plus, Call of Duty is missing from the list, as it is hard to split the F2P Warzone from the premium game.

Top 5 free-to-play games by the number of players:

  • Overwatch 2— 6.3 million;
  • Combat Master: Season 1 — 3.1 million;
  • Farlight — 2.6 million;
  • Project: Playtime — 2.1 million;
  • Stalcraft — 1.8 million.

Top 5 free-to-play games by gross revenue:

  • Summoners War: Chronicles — $24.4 million;
  • Marvel Snap — $19.3 million;
  • Tower of Fantasy — $17.5 million;
  • Undecember — $15.2 million;
  • Torchlight: Infinite — $11.5 million.

According to Carless, most of the top 10 titles have at least 400k lifetime players. The median is 763k (“1.5-2x as many people added these games to their Steam library, but didn’t play them”). And the median gross revenue is $1.82 million.

The median RpP (revenue per player) is $2.02. There are also exceptions like Magic The Gathering: Arena ($17), Tower Fantasy ($25.2), and Uncharted Waters Origins with a whopping $53.49 (91.6k players, $4.9 million gross).

It is worth noting that most titles in the top 30 have much more successful mobile versions. For example, Marvel Snap has reached over $116 million in revenue on iOS and Android, with $88 million generated in 2023 alone.

For more information on other games, check this Google spreadsheet with the full data.


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