Over 1,100 Steam games earned at least $10k within two weeks of launch in 2019 That's up 18% from last year, while new game release totals were up 11%

Rebekah Valentine Senior Staff Writer Tuesday 7th April 2020 Share this article Share

Companies in this article Valve

Valve has shared new data showing trends in new game release earnings on Steam over the years, revealing that in 2019, over 1,100 games earned over $10,000 within the first two weeks of launch.

That number is up from 2018, when nearly 1,000 games earned the same amount over the same period, and continues a trend of the number of games earning that amount rising each year going back to 2005 to 2006.

In its blog post sharing its findings, Valve suggests that $10,000 was the metric used because most recent games that reached that amount in two weeks would go on to earn between $20,000 and $60,000 over the first twelve months, numbers which Valve was able to use as a broad benchmark for "success."

"The $10,000 threshold was a fairly arbitrary starting point, and to make sure this analysis wasn't a fluke, we also tested higher and lower cutoffs and different time ranges," reads the post.

"We found similar patterns in all cases. For example, we see more than four times the number of games earning over $5,000 in the first two weeks in 2019 vs 2013, and more than three times the number of releases earning over $250,000."

As Valve points out in its analysis, though this trend can be attributed in part to the number of games being released on Steam rising each year, 2019 did see a slight proportional jump. The number of games released on Steam increased 11% year-over-year in 2019, but the number of games that achieved $10,000 or more in revenue in the first two weeks increased 18% year-over-year.

Additionally, Valve looked at median game earnings in 2018 and 2019, and determined that the median game on Steam released in 2019 earned 24% more in its first two weeks of sales than the median game in 2018.