Over 5,000 games released on Steam this year didn't make enough money to recover the $100 fee to put a game on Valve's store, research estimates

Don't bother sitting down because you'll just stand up when you hear this: a ton of games were released on Steam this year. Valve's store has seen nearly 13,000 game launches since January 1, 2025, according to Steam data hound Gamalytic, and a majority of those games went straight under the couch to be forgotten for the rest of time like lost batteries.

Gamalytic regularly updates its data but these particular milestones and thresholds were recently flagged on social media by Artur Smiarowski, creator of turn-based roguelike RPG Soulash and its markedly more popular sequel Soulash 2. As of today, Steam has seen an estimated 12,732 games released in 2025.

It's important to call out now that Gamalytic uses relatively soft "estimation methodology" since we can only glean so much without proper access to Valve's data. In a self-assessment, Gamalytic says, "For individual games, our tests have shown that 77% of estimates were within 30% margin of error, while 98% were within 50% error margin," further claiming that, "At an aggregate level, estimates were 99% accurate."

More popular and active games provide more data to work with, and often official reports to compare against, leading to more accurate estimations. Caveats include greater deviation for smaller and free-to-play games (sure to be many of the least profitable games on Steam), inaccurate Steam bundle sale estimations, and potential bugs.

That being said, the volume of reported low-selling games, evaluated using multiple data points, does say something about the quiet masses of overlooked games on Steam. They offer less data for estimates which will lead to greater deviation, but they have less data available for a reason, in other words. And even if we assume a 50% error, well, 50% of very little is still very little.

"8% of the releases are estimated to have grossed over $100k," Smiarowski said, citing Gamalytic aggregates. "40% didn't see a return on their $100 release cost." Smiarowski is referring to the $100 Steam direct product submission fee, which is not refundable but is recouped once your game (app) reaches $1,000 in adjusted gross revenue.

A chart Smiarowski shared, which appears to be exclusive to premium versions of Gamalytic, shows that the bottom 30% of games by revenue averaged just $37 in apparent gross.

Freely available portions of the 2025 data claim that 8,388 (or 65.9%) of 2025 Steam releases earned less than $1,000 in revenue. 47.4% are estimated to have sold under 100 copies, with 28% estimated between 100 and 1,000 copies.

It goes without saying that completely free-to-play games with no internal or auxiliary monetization (like 'support the dev' DLC) aren't going to make any money, and this data shouldn't be treated as gospel. But the sheer volume of largely unnoticed games released on Steam relative to the store's huge annual volume remains a fascinating side effect of PC gaming's more open developer culture, which sees many people put hobbyist games on Steam purely for fun with no expectations of a viable business.

The Steam store just added a feature I didn't know I needed until Valve pointed it out: a dedicated page for every bundle containing a game.