Valve says 5,863 titles earned over $100,000 on Steam in 2025

Comments

• ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Enough for one dev for a year …such success.

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  • carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    and considering that there were over 120k games released on steam as of 2025 😵‍💫

    game development is not the goldmine some think it is

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    • CMLVI@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I feel like you’d have to control for the obvious asset flips or just random, I guess, spam games thrown out on a daily basis. I don’t think it’d move the needle that much tho

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    • onion_dude@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      And somehow that’s actually better odds than getting a good job after university 1.2m applicants for 17k graduates

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  • doublah@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    In the US maybe, $100k is several years wages in many countries.

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    • ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Ok… Most of those are probably American made games. And even if it’s 3 devs, that’s not enough to keep most studios open, even tiny ones.

      The point was it’s not a lot.

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• Ryoae@piefed.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  He conceded that earning $100,000 could mean wild success for one team or “total disaster” for another, but reiterated his belief that “dramatically more games” are finding success on the PC storefront.

  I don’t know with that. I think most teams would be happier getting more than 100k. If you’re an indie team and you’re driven by how well you want your game to go, I would think you’d like to make more than 100k. Especially given how games bigger than yours go to multi-million statuses.

  Also he never described what number of said team that 100k would be good for. I think maybe a 2-person team. But more than 2, like 10, then making 100k would be considered a total disaster scenario.

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  • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Only 100k for a small indie dev’s first game is great.

    Only 100k for an Electronic Arts game would be fucking hilarious.

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    • CatZoomies@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Sad Skull and Bones noises

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    • Noodle07@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Wouldn’t be surprising though haha

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• FirmDistribution@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • commander@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I don’t think the 5863 is limited to games released in 2025

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    • leoj@piefed.zip ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      that changes the math… a bit…

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  • ViatorOmnium@piefed.social ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    100k is not enough to pay even a single full time dev, so I wouldn’t call this the success threshold.

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• FirmDistribution@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    So 113k released between 2016 and 2025 is about 12600 a year. We have only been told that 5863 games made more than 100k last year, not what their total lifetime revenues are. Bearing in mind games generally make the most money in the first year of release (of course there there is big variation and there is a tail but mostly), then very crudely as much as 46% of new games could be making at least 100K in the first year. That’s an overestimate for many reasons but 5% is also a huge underestimate as the figure is using at all games released across 9 years and diluting the the 1 year figure we have. Also we need to bare in mind how much of the Steam library is slop and not an actual fully formed game, or is place holder entries for things like demos and even DLC.

    The real figure will sit between those two extreme limits, it’s not going to be as low as 5% but also not as high as 46%.

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