According to a study by Gamalytic, several thousand games released in 2025 sold so poorly that they didn't even recoup the fee for listing on Steam.
The data was brought to attention by Polish indie developer Artur Smiarowski, author of the Soulash series. The presented table shows that since the beginning of the year, about 13,000 games have been released on Steam, and only 8% of them have earned more than $100,000 — such projects can be considered commercially successful.
However, 40% of releases did not bring their authors even $100 — the minimum amount required to add a game to the Steam catalog. This means that the development costs of most of them were not recouped at all. According to Smiarowski, almost half of the games of 2025 are projects "that nobody needs." He advises novice authors to first publish their ideas on the free platform Itch.io before paying for listing on Steam.
Gamalytic clarifies that the data is based on estimates and may not be absolutely accurate, especially for indie games, for which it is difficult to obtain real sales figures. However, the accuracy of the sample, according to the researchers, is about 99%.
Earlier, the head of the gaming department at Twitch, Bill Young, noted that 79% of last year's releases did not gain access to Steam features, including collectible cards, because they attracted too few players.