GameDiscoverCo: Games' long tail revenue on Steam in 2024
Check the benchmark of revenue multipliers in the 1st year to your 1st week revenue.
Simon Carless and his team calculated how first-week sales on Steam compare to first-year sales. GameDiscoverCo already conducted a similar study in April 2024, which included over 100 games. This time, the study covered all games released on Steam in 2023.
Lethal Company (first-year revenue 507x first week), Class of ‘09: The Re-Up (first-year sales 106x first week), and Pizza Tower (first-year sales 22.5x first week) are the games with the longest revenue tail among all new projects in 2023.
If you look for patterns, the long revenue tail is mostly found in viral projects and in games with co-op and multiplayer modes that are supported by streamers.
❗️It’s important to note that the projects above are not the top earners, but those with the highest first-year to first-week revenue ratio. For the most part, these are indie projects that weren’t widely known before launch. It’s much harder for AAA projects to achieve such multipliers.
The more pre-orders a project has, the lower the first-year to first-week revenue ratio. The size of the potential audience also affects the ratio.
Projects that failed to meet audience expectations have poor ratios. Notable examples: Redfall and Payday 3.
The median first-year to first-week revenue ratio among all games released in 2023 is 2.64x. For projects that sold more than 1,000 copies in the first week, the median increases to 2.69x.
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In the April 2024 survey, the median ratio was 3.16x. This may be due to sampling specifics.
The highest long-tail revenue ratio is seen in projects with sales over 10,000 but under 50,000 copies - 3.6x. The lowest ratio is in projects that sold over 100,000 copies in the first week - 2.61x (this is directly related to pre-orders).
If you look at units sold instead of revenue, the situation is similar. The median number of copies sold in the first year compared to the first week ranges from 2.68x (for projects with 100,000+ first-week sales) to 3.77x (for projects with over 10,000 but under 50,000 first-week sales). The difference in ratios between revenue and units sold is about 5-7%.
GameDiscoverCo looked at projects priced over $4.99 and that sold more than 100 copies in their first week on Steam, and prepared benchmarks. There’s a 50% chance to sell 2.47x your first-week sales in the first year. There’s only a 5% chance of selling 9.67x more than your first week.