Behold, "the whole story of Steam's economy in one picture": the top …

New analysis of 99,206 Steam games illustrates just how extreme the economics can be on Valve's PC gaming emporium, with a full half of paid games earning well under an estimated $4,000 while the upper crust gross anywhere from $15 million to several billion.

This research comes from game discovery hub We Love It. Totally Human Media's Ichiro Lambe and Matt Martindale worked with VaporLens' Dr. Tim Ermilov to analyze 99,206 paid games, estimate their earnings, and plot genre data. Lambe notably worked at Valve from 2018 to 2020, and he "co-created Steam Labs at Valve to improve game discovery and recommendation," per his LinkedIn profile.

Their analysis comes with the usual Steam research caveat: Valve doesn't publish revenue figures, so they're instead reverse-engineered using user reviews as a base that's then multiplied to estimate sales. hilogame.news

This report also only looks at premium games, meaning free-to-play giants like Valve's Counter-Strike are left out, as are "non-game software, adult-only titles and unreleased entries." The list of 99,206 was selected from a base of 136,281.

The standard multiplier here is 35, so this research assumes one Steam review is worth 35 sales at a game's current listed price, though you can also use a more "conservative" 20 or "generous" 50 in the report's impressive graphs. This ratio is not constant across games in real life, and Steam games always sell more when discounted (unless you're exactly Factorio), so do not take this as gospel.

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Despite extremely soft estimates, especially for massive games where one percentage point is worth more money than I'll ever see, the aggregated trends here are still useful and interesting. Many estimates also align with publicly available financial reports as well as other analyst research.

"Half of all paid games on Steam have earned less than an estimated $3,622 in their entire lifetime," the report reads. "A game at the 90th percentile has earned about $236,184, and the 99th percentile starts at $15,872,031."

A scatter plot of game revenue puts this into perspective: a storm of green at the bottom, and a sparse constellation of hits at the top. Around or above the $100 million revenue mark, Half-Life 2, Vampire Survivors, Terraria, Among Us, Stardew Valley, Valheim, Schedule 1, Palworld, and Baldur's Gate 3 shine like stars. At the very top rests our sun: GTA 5. (What's GTA 6, then? A black hole? A supernova?)

"On a linear scale the same chart is a flat line and about two hundred visible dots, which is the whole story of Steam's economy in one picture," the report adds.

A full 8,024 paid games analyzed don't have any reviews at all. Last year, Steam data sleuth Gamalytic estimated that over 5,000 games released in 2025 alone didn't even earn enough to cover the $100 Steam listing fee.

Arguably more striking is the rate of Steam's growth. "Steam's catalogue grew faster than its revenue," the report says, and this has seen those earning extremes widen. A massive 19,714 games were released on Steam in 2024, and 2025 passed even that at 23,107.

Go back just five years and Steam looks very different with 7,427 games released in 2018 – more than even 2019, and the highest on record at the time. 2026 has already doubled that at 15,814 games released, and the year still has several busy months ahead of it.

Steam's revenue, and Valve's earnings, have exploded in the same way. Last month, Alinea Analytics reported that Steam has made Valve more money in the first half of 2026 than in the entirety of 2020. PC gaming is notably the platform showing the most growth in many regions, here in this mature gaming market and cost-of-living crisis.

The extrapolated genre math is also fascinating. Sandbox games have exploded on Steam in recent years, this report finds, and are now the most reliably bankable genre on the whole platform, with both the highest median and top decile revenue. In 2026, sandbox also ranks highest in "crowding vs. payoff," beating out much larger genres in estimated revenue per game.

Other top genres, ranked by estimated revenue, include:

• Visual novel
• Simulation
• RPG
• Horror
• Psychological horror
• Point & Click
• Sports (notably, heavily affected by microtransaction revenue)
• FPS (similar to sports, and also skewed by absent F2P giants like Counter-Strike)

The worst-performing genres on Steam are 3D and 2D platformers, according to this report, and data showing "when each genre peaked" suggests they've only struggled more in recent years. The action and adventure genres are so broad and popular that they've been giants for years, but simulation and strategy games are seemingly gaining on them in terms of new games released.

Obviously, this genre math is also a little opaque. Would a hit like Hollow Knight: Silksong go in 2D platformers, or, with no Metroidvania tag, the broad "Exploration" or "Action" tags? "A game counts towards a genre only when the tag is one of its six most popular tags," the report explains.

This may be the most comprehensive, best-presented report I've seen for this side of Steam, and it really underscores an old adage of the internet age: for every breakout success story, there's surely hundreds or thousands failures.

After earning $1 million on Steam from a game that took 4 months to make, stunned devs end up in Valve's coveted "chocolate tier."

Player choice is a time-honored part of sci-fi action-RPGs, going back to the likes of Deus Ex, through the genre-defining Mass Effect trilogy, and now The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is joining those ranks. In the latest post about the upcoming game, developer Owlcat Games chats how what you choose will change the complexion of the narrative.

The team points out that people saw one possible fork in the road in the Beta, but what "players have not seen is just how far that decision ripples."

Essentially, you have to pick whether to defend your space station, or give it up to roving mercenaries. The immediate effect is how much combat you'll see, but there'll be further ramifications down the road.

"Later, you may meet the families of station personnel and see for yourself how your one decision has affected them," Owlcat Games writes. "The consequences can even reach the people behind the unauthorized raid - especially if your actions allowed the situation on the station to spiral beyond their control."

This spills out into cast dynamics, too, and not just in terms of romance. Young crewmate Polly is used as an example, because you have to choose who she'll shadow, and that can have a pretty profound impact on her.

"Polly may become a cautious hacker, a capable engineer, or pursue a career in medicine," the post says. "The mentor you choose will shape not only her abilities, but also who she will become."

This will no doubt be space catnip to the ears of Mass Effect fans who're waiting for Mass Effect 5 - even if this is very much its own kind of game. The deeper and more complex the choices, the better, to be honest. Owlcat then takes a second to highlight the political aspects here.

"How you deal with Earth, Mars, and the Belt ultimately affects how their stories unfold, including the fates of important characters," the devs say. "Building a strong relationship with a faction can also open up unique rewards, including exclusive items and a faction-specific quest. Those relationships can even pay off during missions, with factions potentially providing direct support."

This Trekkie is apprehensive, but you're saying a lot of the right things, Owlcat, and I admire that much. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is due out in the back half of 2027. Plenty of time to ponder how you might or might not ruin your save.

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Chromite isn't actually rare in Palworld, but you've got to have a specific tool (or pal) to mine it, which is different from most other resources. To save you from the guesswork, I'll show you how to use a metal detector to get Chromite initially and also a passive farming solution for bigger hauls so you're set up to make your first batch of Hexolite when you're ready.

Palworld Chromite location

The Metal Detector is easy to use and automatically scans the soil around you as you explore. If you use Smokie's partner skill you've got to spam it by pressing the E key while you walk around instead. When either method detects Chromite, a rocky node (highlighted by a blue beacon) sprouts from the ground. Harvest it with a pickaxe, just like you would any other ore.

Easy Chromite farm

Grand Theft Auto 6 will, I'm assured, be the most immersive videogame of all time. You simply won't be able to discern reality from fiction anymore. Your gaze will drift from your television, to outside, to the television, to outside, and the sheer fidelity of Rockstar's opus will be such that you can no longer tell the slightest difference between the two. You will utterly lose your mind. It's gonna be great.

GTA 5, though? Hardly immersive at all by comparison. If I'm going to successfully mod this game into GTA 6, I'm going to need to rectify that. So I did.

I have installed Roleplay Alone, a mod which turns Rockstar's crime sandbox into a sort of pseudo life sim, filled with all manner of strange little jobs for Michael, Franklin, and Trevor to get up to. Thrill as you mine various ores! Marvel as you package and distribute cannabis! Be amazed as you smelt things at a cement mixer somehow!

I immediately set about my new labours. Franklin, in a $3000 cashmere jumper, manifested a two-handed mattock and began chipping away at some rocks. He did this with one hand for reasons of either incredible strength or limited animations.

This took some time. So long, in fact, that Franklin got a little bit tired according to Roleplay Alone's newly-added energy meter. I found a rhythm: convert a few boulders to ore, then tap Y to crumple to the floor, fully clothed—as if struck down by an assassin's bullet—to regain my depleted energy. Fortunately, the various hard-hatted men in the quarry did not mind that A) I was mining all their rocks or B) sleeping on the floor.

Is GTA 5 rendered uncannily immersive by Roleplay Alone? Well. No. But it is very entertaining to set the game's protagonists to blue-collar tasks like mining and ore-smelting, and even more entertaining when you're doing something completely different, forget what the Y key does now, and find yourself collapsed asleep in the road like the world's most narcoleptic crime lord.

I do not think I will spend a lot of time mining—if for no other reason than doing it for about 15 minutes netted me only enough fake currency to buy a burger—but it's good to know I could. Just like I could in real life. Maybe.

And besides, I can fish now.

Epic Mickey man Warren Spector—also known for other games you may have heard of, like Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Deus Ex—recently took to LinkedIn to share some thoughts about Disney's upcoming Oswald the Lucky Rabbit miniseries, which was showcased by Jon Favreau at the recent D23 event. Spector said he's "seriously looking forward to it," but he's also a little annoyed by what he sees as the erasure of the game that helped bring the character back into the public consciousness.

Favreau provided a brief overview of Oswald's creation in the 1920s during his presentation, relating how creator Walt Disney lost the rights to the character shortly thereafter. While numerous Oswald shorts were produced, the character was utterly overshadowed by Disney's subsequent creation, Mickey Mouse, and languished in obscurity for years. Disney reacquired the rights to Oswald in 2006, and "we've seen him pop up in games and in shorts and things" since then, Favreau said—and, well, that's the extent of it.

That didn't sit right with Spector, who made Oswald a major NPC in Epic Mickey, and a playable character in Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two. "I’m seriously looking forward to it but it seems as if people are looking at it as the debut of the character," Spector wrote. "Call me small-minded but that ain’t right.

"In the Epic Mickey game—released in 2010—the team at Junction Point featured Oswald in his first Disney role since 1928. Two years later, in Epic Mickey: The Power of Two, we gave him a voice (thanks to the incredible talent of Frank Welker). That was the first time he ever spoke in a Disney story. And just to put a cherry on top, we gave Ortensia her name, her voice, her personality and her role as Oswald’s paramour. None of that dates back to Disney."

Spector admitted he's "a little bitter about the lack of credit the team gets" for all the work they put into bringing such a foundational character back into the public eye. But his real concern is simply ensuring the record remains accurate.

"I was blown away that Disney trusted us and saw fit to reintroduce the little guy in a game," he wrote. "But the team did a great job and deserves to be recognized for it before Hollywood makes people forget the games ever existed."

One of the challenges facing Spector here is that the Epic Mickey games were, well, forgettable, despite some striking concept art. The original was a Nintendo Wii exclusive that posted middling reviews and sales alike; it didn't come to PC and other platforms until the Rebrushed Edition in 2024, which holds "very positive" reviews on Steam—perhaps in part because of the presence of Deus Ex DNA that writer Jeremy Peel detected in it. 2012's Epic Mickey 2 sold even fewer copies than the first game, though, and Junction Point was closed just a couple months after its release.

None of which invalidates Spector's point: Junction Point pulled Oswald out of the past and gave the character a depth and distinctiveness it never had when it was merely a Mickey precursor. It deserves credit for doing so, and hopefully as the Oswald series comes closer to fruition—it's set to debut sometime in 2027—Disney will make an effort to ensure Junction Point gets it.