Stephen Brenish
Launching a game on Steam without a revenue projection is like shipping without a milestone plan: you might land somewhere interesting, or you might run out of runway first. This calculator gives you a grounded starting point, built on the most recent published benchmarks rather than guesswork.
There are two honest ways to estimate Steam revenue, depending on where you are. Before launch, your best signal is wishlists. After launch, it is your review count.
Estimates only. Built on published GameDiscoverCo and Gamalytic benchmarks, not Valve data. Individual games vary by 10x or more.
Week one uses the median of 0.10 sales per wishlist above $10 and 0.15 at $10 or less, about a third lower for Early Access. Year one is the median 2.59x week-one units and 2.46x week-one revenue; two years is 3.32x units and 2.99x revenue. Revenue grows more slowly than units because later sales are mostly at a discount.
Net is after Valve's 30% share (25% above $10M and 20% above $50M in lifetime revenue, not modeled here) and an 8% refund allowance, before sales tax, regional pricing and any publisher split.
Before launch: from wishlists
GameDiscoverCo’s October 2025 analysis put the median at about 0.15 first-week sales per wishlist for games launching with more than 25,000 wishlists, and about 0.10 for games priced above $10. Early Access launches convert roughly a third lower than full releases, according to an earlier GameDiscoverCo study of about 700 games.
Launch week is only the start. GameDiscoverCo’s July 2026 study of about 5,000 Steam games launched between July 2023 and July 2025, each selling more than 1,000 copies in its first month, measured the long tail:
| Period | Units, as a multiple of week one | Revenue, as a multiple of week one |
|---|---|---|
| First year | 2.59x | 2.46x |
| First two years | 3.32x | 2.99x |
Games priced at $10 or more reached about 2.7 times week-one units in year one, against about 2.32 times for cheaper games, and co-op games ran well above the median, at 3.53 times. The calculator uses the overall medians. The Steam wishlist calculator goes deeper on launch week, with weak, typical and strong scenarios.
After launch: from reviews
Once a game is out, its public review count is the best free clue to its sales. The Boxleiter method multiplies the review count by a sales-per-review ratio, and published ratios have moved over time:
- Jake Birkett’s 2018 dataset, written up for Game Developer, had a median of about 77 sales per review, falling to about 65 for games released from 2017, with a range of roughly 30 to 150.
- Gamalytic data published by GameDiscoverCo in 2023 found about 36 sales per review for games with fewer than 100 reviews, and about 53 for games with 1,000 to 10,000 reviews.
The calculator shows 30, 50 and 70 sales per review side by side. Two cautions. Review counts tell you units, not revenue, because they cannot show how many copies sold at a discount, so the full-price figures are an upper bound. And the ratio varies with genre, price and age, so compare against similar games rather than trusting one number.
What Valve takes, and what else comes off
Valve’s standard revenue share is 30%, dropping to 25% on lifetime revenue between $10 million and $50 million and to 20% above that. Players can request a refund within 14 days of purchase if they have played for less than two hours; the calculator applies an 8% refund allowance, which is an assumption you should replace with your own data once you have it. Sales tax or VAT, regional pricing and any publisher or partner split reduce what you receive further, and none of those are modeled.
A worked illustration
Assume a full release at $19.99 with 20,000 wishlists at launch:
- Week one at the median of 0.10 sales per wishlist: 2,000 copies, or $39,980 gross.
- After Valve’s 30% and the 8% refund allowance: about $25,700 net in week one.
- At the median long tail of 2.46 times week-one revenue: about $63,300 net in the first year, and about $77,000 after two years.
That is a respectable result for a solo developer and a small one for a team of five. Run the same numbers at half the median, which is a plausible weak launch, and the first year falls to about $31,700.
Plan for the downside
The most common financial failure in indie development is not a bad game. It is a studio sized for the optimistic case. Model at least three outcomes, make sure the studio survives the weak one, and treat anything above the median as upside. Then compare the result with what you are spending: the indie game budget calculator covers the cost side, and how to estimate game development costs explains the method behind it.
Sources
- Simon Carless, “The state of Steam wishlist conversions”, GameDiscoverCo, October 17, 2025.
- Simon Carless, “What ’long tail’ should you expect for your PC game in 2026?”, GameDiscoverCo, July 21, 2026.
- “GameDiscoverCo: Conversion benchmarks of Steam wishlists into sales in the first month”, GameDev Reports, May 10, 2024.
- Jake Birkett, “Using Steam reviews to estimate sales”, Game Developer, May 4, 2018.
- Simon Carless, “What ‘Steam review count’ tells us about your game”, GameDiscoverCo, August 28, 2023.
