A new statistic shows that for many games, it is a no-go to appear on Steam. The fee for launching on Valve’s platform is comparatively low.
What is this statistic? According to the website gamalytic.com, nearly 13,000 new games have been released on Steam since January 1, 2025. Only 8 percent of these games are said to have generated more than $100,000 in revenue.
A staggering 40 percent apparently did not even earn enough money to cover the $100 (87.99 Euros) required for the so-called “Steam Direct Product Submission Fee” to Valve. On steampowered.com, it states:
The fee is non-refundable. However, it is included in the payout that occurs after your product has earned gross revenues of at least $1,000 from Steam store purchases and in-app purchases.
According to Gamalytic, however, 8,441 of the nearly 13,000 games made less than $1,000 in revenue, which is why they will not get refunded for the fee.
Note that this data is not official from Valve, but rather estimates from a hobby project that carry a certain margin of error (more on this in the About section of gamalytic.com). However, for instance, there are developers of Steam games who use the tool – such as the mind behind Soulash and Soulash 2 (Source: X).
This game should finally make decent profits on Steam:
“There are just too many games”
How does the community react to this? These statistics for the Steam games released so far in 2025 are currently being discussed on, for example, Reddit.
- salad_tongs_1 writes on Reddit: “I’m not surprised. I’ve seen a few real stinkers this year. Many ‘Shop Simulator’ copy-paste games. Things with AI assets in the store. And not every idea is going to be the next Balatro.”
- Cloud_N0ne explains on Reddit: “There are just too many games. The market is oversaturated, and there will be games that simply fly under EVERYONE’s radar.”
- Archersbows7 has a suggestion on Reddit: “Honestly, I think they should raise the fee to $250 to weed out a lot of the cheap junk (shovelware) and reduce the number of games on Steam in favor of quality to decrease saturation.”
The problem of the ever-increasing flood of games on platforms like Steam is not new, but it gets worse with each passing year – also due to advancements in AI and increasingly powerful graphic engines.
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