Steam just made $11 billion in the last 6 months, and most of it came from older games

[Skye Jacobs]

Bottom line: Steam just posted its strongest half-year ever. In the first six months of 2026, it's estimated that games sold through the platform generated $11.1 billion in gross revenue, a record haul for the PC storefront. That figure is close to what Steam generated across all of 2021, a year boosted by pandemic lockdowns – also only 21% of that revenue comes from games released in 2026. The rest came from older titles in Steam's back catalog.

Alinea Analytics lists Forza Horizon 6 as the top-earning new game on Steam so far this year, with an estimated $197.7 million in revenue since launch. Resident Evil Requiem is close behind at $194.5 million, followed by Crimson Desert at $190.1 million. Those sales numbers highlight how a few big releases can drive a large share of the platform's revenue.

The report ties the revenue surge to a some clear trends. One is user growth in Asia, with China singled out as a major source of new players and spending. Another is higher prices: publishers are putting out more high-priced games and using big, attention-grabbing partnerships to help sell them.

At the same time, many publishers that tried to push users onto their own PC launchers have returned to Steam after gamers were reluctant to use them.

Steam has spent years building features that make it feel like a stable home base for PC libraries: backward compatibility, regional pricing, frequent sales, and reliable access to past purchases. Players can return to games they bought long ago without worrying much about changing hardware or operating systems.

Valve has also been investing in technologies that break Steam out of a pure Windows mold. SteamOS, Proton, and related compatibility layers are all aimed at running Windows-based PC games on other hardware and operating systems, from handheld devices to non-Windows platforms. That work is often invisible to end users, but the goal is to let people buy a game once and keep playing it across different devices.

Other storefronts have tried different approaches. Epic Games Store, for example, has given away free games to attract users. But former employees have said that many players show up to claim those free titles and then return to Steam for most of their play and spending.

Alinea's long-term estimates show how much Steam's position has changed over the past decade. The firm's modeling suggests Steam's annual revenue climbed from about $5.5 billion in 2017 to roughly $20 billion in 2025. With $11.1 billion already booked in the first half and spending on older games still robust, Valve's position in PC gaming keeps growing.

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Steam just made $11 billion in the last 6 months, and most of it came from older games

 

[Lowhangingfruit]

Yes Steam is a monopoly in this space, but it's hard to be mad because they provide hands down the best product. Steam is very player and user friendly. Family sharing is hands down the absolute best. Steam Proton works great. The steam deck. And the massive workshop community. Steam definitely gives the vibes that it wants to do good.

Everything about the Epic and Origin stores reeks of corporate minimum input for maximum cash grab.

 

[Watzupken]

The outcome is not surprising. Most new games are overpriced and lack any meaningful fun factor or engaging storyline. Older games are heavily discounted, looks reasonably good and does not impact performance (hence people with older gaming hardware can also enjoy).

 

[Vixiy]

Steam definitely gives the vibes that it wants to do good.

Steam reeks of price fixing and illegal gamling rings. Not to mention they sat on their hands for ages while TF2 became overrun by hackers commiting actual crimes (the correct response would've been to take it offline until they had a solution).

I would say Epic had vibes it wanted to do good for a while. The most generous licensing of a commercial engine and taking a low cut from developers making the industry acessible, as well as fighting Apple and Google's control. But I've been turned off by Tim Sweeny's AI attitudes and lately he just seems to be engaged in braindead contrarianism at the expense of selfdestructing the brand and all the good will it once generated.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Yes Steam is a monopoly in this space, but it's hard to be mad because they provide hands down the best product. Steam is very player and user friendly. Family sharing is hands down the absolute best. Steam Proton works great. The steam deck. And the massive workshop community. Steam definitely gives the vibes that it wants to do good.

Everything about the Epic and Origin stores reeks of corporate minimum input for maximum cash grab.

The fact you just names two other stores on the platform immediately disproves your claim that steam is a monopoly.

 

[The Eck]

Older music is better than new. Why wouldn’t older games be too?

 

[Endymio]

Yes Steam is a monopoly in this space, but it's hard to be mad because they provide hands down the best product.

Excluding government-mandated monopolies like power utilities and cable, you'll struggle to find **any** monopoly that isn't so because it provides the best product at the best price.

 

[opckieran]

Everything about the Epic and Origin stores reeks of corporate minimum input for maximum cash grab.

Of the over 600 non-Steam games in my collection, only one of them was paid for. $2. The rest were giveaways from Epic or Amazon Prime.

 

[LuckyMenace]

It’s funny that people got all up in arms about Playstation going all digital while Steam has been raking it in for years. Speaking from the wallet, gamers have abandoned physical games long ago.

 

[toooooot]

We should start a petition to ask Steam to lower its tax on game makers. 1% should be more than enough for such healthy company.

 

[axiomatic13]

Of the over 600 non-Steam games in my collection, only one of them was paid for. $2. The rest were giveaways from Epic or Amazon Prime.

I use UNRAID for docker and VM's. Their app store has an automated plug in to grab the latests free game from the Epic store without your interaction. The day a new free game is available, it grabs it automatically. Silly, but hey, free games.

 

[Vixiy]

It’s funny that people got all up in arms about Playstation going all digital while Steam has been raking it in for years. Speaking from the wallet, gamers have abandoned physical games long ago.

I still miss buying PC games on disc.

 

[Kirby1]

Yes Steam is a monopoly in this space, but it's hard to be mad because they provide hands down the best product. Steam is very player and user friendly. Family sharing is hands down the absolute best. Steam Proton works great. The steam deck. And the massive workshop community. Steam definitely gives the vibes that it wants to do good.

Everything about the Epic and Origin stores reeks of corporate minimum input for maximum cash grab.

Steam is not a monopoly. Being the best service provider and getting the most customers as a result doesn't make something a monopoly. Being first to market and having decades of loyal customer growth doesn't make Steam a monopoly. If Valve was doing something to make it harder for other companies to sell games on PC, then they would be a monopoly, but they're not.

No other digital platform on PC has ever even come remotely close to what Steam offers. Ever other platform is vastly inferior, that's not Valves fault. They're not preventing EA or Microsoft from making their digital storefront apps more fleshed out. I can't even see any patch notes or update history info on the xbox app.

Comparing Valve to other digital stores is like comparing Pizza to a Bologna Sandwich, but if they were the same price. Imagine if Bologna companies tried to claim Pizza is unfairly taking customer away when anyone with a brain would see that Pizza is just better and thus people prefer it.

Not to mention the value of having everything in one place. It's really comes down to that more than anything else, and that's not Valves fault either. People want all their games in one place, that place is Steam.

 

[Kirby1]

It’s funny that people got all up in arms about Playstation going all digital while Steam has been raking it in for years. Speaking from the wallet, gamers have abandoned physical games long ago.

Steam didn't stop physical sales though. Valve never said "we are going to end physical sales of PC games". They couldn't do that because they don't control that, if companies wanted to release physical PC games even today, they can.

Clearly things just evolved differently on PC. The files sized of games got a lot bigger, and no one really wanted to buy blu-ray drives for their PC. Nothing prevented it, I even had a blu-ray drive for PC at one point because at the time physical games on PC were still a thing and I thought they would move to blu-rays, but it just didn't have a demand so it died off.

On consoles, there clearly is a demand for physical games and Sony is taking it away from consumers. It's not something that's fading out naturally, it's being taken away.

 

[Vixiy]

If Valve was doing something to make it harder for other companies to sell games on PC, then they would be a monopoly

Price fixing

 

[Endymio]

Steam is not a monopoly. Being the best service provider and getting the most customers as a result doesn't make something a monopoly.

While I personally (and most sane economists) agree with you, the courts have repeatedly disagreed, particularly those in Europe. Even in the US it occasionally occurs, such as the infamous Alcoa antitrust case, in which the judge ruled Alcoa monopolistically "suppressed competition" by doing nothing more than offering the best product at the best price.

 

[Kirby1]

Price fixing

Valve doesn't price fix anything. They just require that prices on Steam can't be higher than other storefront. That's not price fixing.

 

[Kronos82]

I like both Steam and Gog. Steam for the insane amount of games, and Gog for preserving older games.

 

[Vixiy]

Valve doesn't price fix anything. They just require that prices on Steam can't be higher than other storefront. That's not price fixing.

EA doesn't loot box anything. They just require that games have surprise mechanics. That's not loot boxes.

 

[Kirby1]

EA doesn't loot box anything. They just require that games have surprise mechanics. That's not loot boxes.

Wut? That's not an argument like, at all.

Valve does not set prices. They just set their own prices.