Alinea Analytics: Steam reached highest revenue in history in H1'26 - sponsored by PWN Games
Steam is an example of an extremely smart & successful platform.
Numbers are Alinea Analytics estimations, not official Valve data. The company calculates revenue via its own game sales analytics platform.
The big picture
According to Alinea’s estimates, Steam games generated $11.1 billion in gross revenue in H1 2026 - up 14.5% YoY vs H1 2025, and up 8% even compared to H2 2025, which usually gets a boost from winter sales.
$11.1 billion in H1’26 is almost as much as the platform made in all of 2021 ($11.4 billion).
Among the growth drivers: an influx of Asian players (especially from China), higher prices on new releases, viral co-op hits, smarter back-catalog sales strategies from major publishers, and publishers quietly returning to Steam after experimenting with their own launchers.
H1 2026 revenue is 4.7x higher than H1 2017.
Steam’s annual revenue grew from roughly $5.5 billion in 2017 to about $20 billion in 2025.
In the first six months of 2026, Steam made more than it did in all of 2020 (a pandemic year, when everyone was stuck at home).
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Growing share of back catalog
The share of revenue from new releases (games launched the same year the data was collected) is shrinking: 29% in H1’24, 27% in H1’25, 21% in H1’26.
Correspondingly, the share from older games grew from 71% to 79% over two years. Alinea Analytics links this to publishers getting better at working the back catalog (leaning harder into discounts, bundles, timed sales).
Every new release increasingly competes not with this year’s games, but with past hits selling at more attractive prices. The shrinking graphical gap between game generations and the current hardware pricing crisis only amplify this effect for AAA projects.
Top new 2026 games by revenue
Forza Horizon 6 earned $197.6M in under two months since launch (about $4M of that from DLC, including nearly $2M from the VIP Membership). The game has sold more than 3.5 million copies on Steam alone. Its revenue pace is three times better than Forza Horizon 5’s in 2021.
Resident Evil Requiem has $194.5M in revenue (including $1.3M earned from the Deluxe Kit DLC). 3.4 million people have bought the game. Only 8.9% of wishlists have converted to sales so far, which means the game could have a long sales tail.
Crimson Desert has earned just over $190M since its March launch, the only new IP on this list. But its sales pace is, expectedly, slowing.
Slay the Spire 2 has sold 7.1 million copies in 4 months of early access (more than Forza Horizon 6 and Resident Evil Requiem combined), but at a $25 price point it’s only earned $141.7M in revenue. Wishlist conversion is 40% (31% came in the first week).
Subnautica 2 has already earned $133.6M, about $120M of that in May, its early access launch month. Of its 5.6 million wishlists, only 12% have converted so far. Seemingly, people are waiting for more content.
Meccha Chameleon earned $71.3M (at a $6 price tag!) and became Steam’s best-selling game by copies sold.