This year, indie developer Stolen Valor Studios released a specific project on Steam. He called it This Game Costs 200 Dollars and indeed started selling it for $200.
In an interview with WMUR-TV, he stated that he set the price at "200 dollars" because it was the maximum price at which the game could be listed for sale on Steam (although there is an example of Congratulations On Your Purchase, which costs about a thousand dollars). The developer did not expect anyone to buy it, but in the end, he saw a nominal revenue of $1.3 million – then he "almost died."
But in fact, This Game Costs 200 Dollars brought in only about two thousand dollars. This is due to the fact that many buyers used the refund function on Steam. As the developer noted, most of his game's sales came from China:
I'm not kidding. I've heard that expensive games on Steam are used to launder money. I have no idea. It's quite possible that I might now be on a hit list.
According to the data presented, sales of This Game Costs 200 Dollars reached 6,717 copies – of which 6,707 users processed refunds, i.e., more than 99% of sales.
The revenue is indeed $1.38 million, but the real profit is hundreds of times less.