How We Estimate Steam Sales
Steam does not publish sales numbers. Our estimates use the one public signal that tracks sales closely, the number of Steam reviews, calibrated against games whose developers announced their real Steam sales.
The short version
Copies sold are estimated as Steam reviews multiplied by a number of copies per review. That number comes from comparing review counts with official Steam sales announced by developers, at the date of each announcement. Revenue is the estimated copies multiplied by the average price the game actually sold for.
Copies per review
We collected 40 official, Steam-only sales announcements from developers and publishers (most of them from the games' own Steam news posts) and looked at how many reviews each game had on the day of the announcement. Three things stood out:
- New games sell about 72 copies per review in their first month. Reviews come in later than sales at launch.
- From about three months on, it settles near 47 copies per review.
- Old hits keep collecting reviews long after their sales slow down, so from year two we lower it step by step, to 28 copies per review for games older than six years.
How accurate it is
We tested the method on the 24 most reliable announcements, each time leaving that game out of the calculation. The typical estimate was about 40% above or below the official number: 11 of 24 were within 30%, and 18 of 24 within 50%. That is why every estimate is shown as a range.
Where it is least reliable: story and horror games get many reviews per copy, so we tend to overestimate them. Cheap co-op and party hits sell more copies per review, so we tend to underestimate them. The very biggest and oldest games are the hardest to estimate, and their ranges are wider.
Revenue
Gross revenue is the estimated copies multiplied by the time-weighted average US price the game has sold for since release, including every discount, then lowered by 15% for cheaper regional prices. It is before Steam's share, refunds, taxes and returns, so a developer earns much less than this.
Reviews by language and wishlist rank
Steam shows how many reviews a game has in each language. We collect the 11 biggest Steam languages every week and show each one's share, which hints at where a game's players are. The wishlist rank is the game's position on Steam's own most wishlisted chart, saved every day.
Using these numbers
You are free to quote our estimates with a credit and a link to the game's page on RageQuit. Please call them estimates.
FAQ
Are these official sales figures?
No. They are estimates. Only a game's developer or publisher knows the real number. When an official figure exists, trust it over ours.
Why a range and not one number?
In our tests the estimate was typically about 40% off the official figure, sometimes more. A range is the honest way to show that.
Why do some games have no estimate?
Free to play games have no copies to count, and games with fewer than 500 reviews give numbers too noisy to be useful.
How often are the estimates updated?
Every day, from the latest review counts. Reviews by language are refreshed once a week.
RageQuit Charts is not affiliated with Valve Corporation. Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks of Valve Corporation. Player counts come from the official Steam Web API.