Game devs cash in: Nearly 6,000 Steam games earned over $100,000 last year

[DragonSlayer101]

In a nutshell: At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, Valve revealed that 5,863 games released on Steam earned more than $100,000 in 2025. The company also shared a wealth of other statistics highlighting the platform's popularity among both PC gamers and game developers.

Speaking to reporters and developers on the sidelines of GDC, Valve's Tom Giardino noted that only around 3,000 titles earned over $100,000 at the height of the pandemic in 2020, when many people were spending their time indoors playing video games and consuming online content.

Giardino acknowledged that $100,000 can mean vastly different things depending on the developer: it would be a drop in the ocean for a AAA title but a substantial reward for a solo developer with an indie game. Nevertheless, he insisted that "dramatically more games" are earning higher revenues on Steam today compared with just a few years ago.

Credit: Chris Kerr

He added that Steam has seen a similar trend at other major revenue thresholds, with many more titles now surpassing $500,000 and $1 million per year than in the platform's earlier years. However, Giardino did not provide additional details about these games, including how long it took for them to reach those milestones.

Valve also reported impressive growth in the number of active Steam users, with the platform reaching a record 42 million peak concurrent users in early 2026. Giardino, however, clarified that this figure represents only "the count of people who have the Steam client running" on their PC, even if they are not actively shopping, purchasing, or downloading content.

GDC talk from Valve on the state of Steam in 2026. Here are some numbers that demonstrate the size of the platform:

[image or embed]

– Chris Kerr ➡️ GDC (@kerrblimey.bsky.social) March 11, 2026 at 5:05 AM

He further revealed that in-game concurrent users recently hit a new record of 13.9 million, roughly double the peak concurrent and in-game users from just five years ago. Giardino said the growth is encouraging for developers but acknowledged that platform saturation could become a concern in the future.

Another key metric highlighted by Valve concerns its Daily Deals campaign, which featured over 1,500 titles in 2025. For 69% of these games, it was their first appearance on the list. The campaign proved highly successful, with 8.2 million users purchasing a Daily Deal, representing a 125% year-over-year increase.

Permalink to story:

Game devs cash in: Nearly 6,000 Steam games earned over $100,000 last year

 

[m4a4]

Well, when AAA slop keeps getting pushed, people go to better quality indie games instead lol

 

[Beerfloat]

This is good news. I do like Steam and I think most people do. I reckon outside of Microsoft and Tim Sweeney hardly anyone has a bad thing to say about em. And that's a rare quality. That said, today's good guy can be tomorrow's bully and so I'm all for keeping a competitive field alive.

 

[Lowhangingfruit]

I guess it's good that the numbers are growing, but $100,000 in 1 year is not that much money. Most half decent games take multiple years to complete and multiple people to execute. Games generally do the bulk of their sales on first release, so this number is largely made up of games that released in 2025.

So this number sounds great if you're a single person that made a single game in 1 year. But if you're 2 people and it took you 2 years to complete your game, then your average earnings is $25000/year. That's below the poverty line.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I guess it's good that the numbers are growing, but $100,000 in 1 year is not that much money. Most half decent games take multiple years to complete and multiple people to execute. Games generally do the bulk of their sales on first release, so this number is largely made up of games that released in 2025.

So this number sounds great if you're a single person that made a single game in 1 year. But if you're 2 people and it took you 2 years to complete your game, then your average earnings is $25000/year. That's below the poverty line.

This has always been true. Many dev houses started with a handful of guys surviving on ramen in shared living situations until they hit it big.

Or, you know, they didnt stake their entire financial future on a game before having a reliable brand to sit on. Most small indie devs have day jobs.