Steam’s $15 Billion Haul Is a Catalog Story First

Steam has already generated $15 billion in gross revenue through August 2026, Alinea Analytics estimates. The top 100 new games of the year have contributed $2.4 billion, or 15.9 percent of that total.

The rest is older titles, DLC, in-game buys, and everything that did not launch in 2026. Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea, said the figure is up about 15 percent from the same stretch of 2025, and that the first eight months have already passed 2023’s full-year haul.

How Much of Steam’s $15 Billion Came From New Games?

Elliott posted the estimate on September 3. He called Valve’s hold on PC a functional monopoly, and said 2026 will almost certainly finish well above $20 billion for the first time. That $15 billion is money players spent on the store, not Valve’s fee.

Steam has generated $15 BILLION in gross revenue so far this year (@alineaanalytics estimates).

It's reached this number in record time. Valve's functional monopoly on the PC market really is a behemoth, already up 15% on the same period last year.

And the first eight months of… pic.twitter.com/sGQMIRRZQC

— Rhys Elliott (@superhys) September 3, 2026

The instinct to treat the number as Valve’s own take keeps showing up around the figure, and it muddies the story. Steam’s cut sits on top of that gross, on a sliding scale that shrinks once a game is already huge. Live games and discounted classics are the pile the percentage sits on.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The estimate: Alinea puts Steam’s 2026 gross at $15 billion through the first eight months.
• The new-game slice: The top 100 new 2026 titles account for $2.4 billion, which Elliott puts at 15.9 percent of 2026 Steam revenue so far.
• The volume: About 19,000 new games have listed on Steam in 2026, already past 2024’s full-year count and closing in on 2025.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Valve’s books: Valve has not published an official 2026 storefront total to match the estimate.
• Valve’s take: Nobody has a public 2026 blended cut on that $15 billion, because the 30/25/20 tiers vary by each game’s lifetime sales.

Even the new-release slice is top-heavy. Elliott’s six biggest 2026 launches make up a little under $1 billion, or 6.6% of the store’s year-to-date gross.

Forza, Resident Evil, and a $6 Chameleon

Microsoft’s Forza Horizon 6 leads that short list. Pearl Abyss’s Crimson Desert and Capcom’s Resident Evil Requiem sit just behind it, each a little over $200 million. Then the mix breaks: a $25 roguelike sequel, an early-access diving game, and a $6 indie that sold on volume.

TOP NEW 2026 GAMES ON STEAM

By early July, Elliott had Slay the Spire 2 at 7.1 million copies, more than Forza Horizon 6 and Resident Evil Requiem combined, because Mega Crit priced the sequel at $25. Meccha Chameleon, from a two-person team, was 2026’s top Steam game by copies at $6 a unit. A $70 racer can still out-earn a viral cheap hit. Unit leadership and dollar leadership are different charts on the same store.

Forza Horizon 6 was already pulling in DLC by then, including a VIP membership. Resident Evil Requiem had converted only 8.9 percent of its pre-launch wishlists, a slow burn Elliott called typical for that series. Those tails keep paying after launch week, which is why a new-release table never captures the full store.

Crimson Desert Holds 18% of New-IP Money

Only two of those six titles are new series: Crimson Desert and Meccha Chameleon. The other four are sequels. Widen the lens to the top 100 new 2026 games and the same pattern holds, with one Korean-made exception doing outsized work.

Of the new-game top 100, 63% were actually new IP, but 52.5% of the revenue ($1.25B) came from established IP. But it’s worth noting Crimson Desert, with its $203M, accounts for about 18% of all new-IP revenue in the top 100. When we take Crimson out of the analysis, the 62 new-IP games make up only about 39%.

Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis, Alinea Analytics

Pearl Abyss said Crimson Desert sold 2 million copies on day one, 5 million in less than a month, and 6 million in 83 days, worldwide rather than Steam-only. It held full price near $70 into the summer. Elliott noted in July that monthly Steam revenue on the game had already faded to about $9.2 million, and he argued a discount was due before the autumn pile-up.

Strip that one title out and the new-series story in the top 100 looks like a lot of mid-size games sharing a minority of the money. Sequels still do the dollar work, as Elliott put it.

New Launches Were a Net Negative in the First Half

Alinea’s July note is the cleaner split, because it counts every 2026 launch, not just the top 100. Games on Steam generated $11.1 billion in first-half sales, up 14.5 percent from the first half of 2025 and up 8 percent even on the holiday-heavy second half of 2025. New 2026 releases were 21 percent of that half. In the first half of 2024 the new-year share was 29 percent, then 27 percent in the first half of 2025. Catalog revenue climbed from 71 percent to 79%.

THE FIRST-HALF SPLIT

• H1 2026 gross: $11.1 billion, Alinea’s highest half-year on record, and 4.7 times the first half of 2017.
• New 2026 share: 21 percent of H1 revenue, down from 29 percent in H1 2024.
• Catalog add: Joost van Dreunen, using GYLD figures, found back-catalog sales added $1.80 billion.
• New-game change: New releases fell $0.39 billion, from $2.79 billion to $2.40 billion, a 14 percent drop.

Van Dreunen, a business professor who writes on games and advises GYLD, put the growth math in one line: Steam added $1.41 billion in the first half, and back-catalog sales added $1.80 billion while new launches shrank. New games were a net negative. The platform grew because people bought old games.

On a same-game panel of 16,565 titles from before 2024, GYLD saw spending up 26 percent while average daily players per game fell 10 percent. Players are filling backlogs. They are not matching those buys with playtime. Elliott’s longer view is that Steam’s full-year gross went from about $5.5 billion in 2017 to roughly $20 billion in 2025, and that H1 2026 nearly matched all of pandemic-peak 2021 ($11.4 billion) in six months.

Steam’s Rank 101 to 1,000 Is Mostly Old Hits

Van Dreunen argued the middle of the store, ranks 101 to 1,000, quadrupled from $1.1 billion in 2019 to $4.5 billion in 2025, while the top 10 slipped from $4.3 billion in 2023 to $4.0 billion in 2025. Elliott’s September note agrees the middle is fatter, then adds a correction. Most of that band is not a new class of mid-budget games. It is older hits sliding down the chart.

WHAT THE MIDDLE RANK ACTUALLY CONTAINS

• Age: Of the 900 games ranked 101 to 1,000 by 2026 Steam gross, 83 percent launched before 2026, two-thirds are at least two years old, and 17 percent are 2026 games.
• 2026 take: The median title in that band has made about $4 million in 2026, from $19.9 million at rank 101 to $1.9 million at rank 1,000.
• Lifetime hits: Games that have already earned $50 million or more since launch account for 51 percent of the band’s 2026 revenue.
• Scale: About a third of the list has earned over $50 million lifetime, 22.3 percent over $75 million, 140 games over $100 million, and 5.2 percent over $200 million.

Elliott’s examples in that band include Skyrim, Battlefield 2042, The Elder Scrolls Online, DOOM Eternal, and Devil May Cry 5. A game making $4 million on Steam in 2026 can look mid-market until you remember it was built on a blockbuster budget years ago. Steam’s best offer, in his phrasing, is still those old games on sale.

That is the shelf a 2026 launch walks into. It is not only competing with this week’s other new titles. It is competing with a decade of proven games at $10 and last year’s Game of the Year at $25.

The 30 Percent Cut Still Applies to Most Games

Valve has not charged a flat 30 percent since 2018. In a Steamworks note that December, it said that starting October 1, 2018, a game’s share moves to 75/25 after $10 million in lifetime Steam revenue, then to 80/20 after $50 million. The company counts packages, DLC, in-game sales, and Community Marketplace fees in that total, and it takes 25 percent on earnings beyond $10 million.

Forza Horizon 6, Crimson Desert, and Resident Evil Requiem are already deep in the 20 percent band on those estimates. Most of the 19,000 new 2026 listings never leave 30 percent, because they never reach $10 million. The catalog that now supplies most of the $15 billion is full of games that already cleared those rungs years ago, so Valve’s take on the money that actually moves is lower than the headline 30 percent.

That is also why the monopoly complaint and the growth thesis keep arriving as the same fact. A store that already holds the old hits, the wishlists, and the sale calendar compounds without needing this month’s launch to save the year. Publishers with deep catalogs get paid twice: once on the new SKU, then again every time the old one goes to $15. Studios trying to mint a new series pay the full 30 percent into a store where the bestsellers are often on sale.

Gears, Modern Warfare 4, and Phantom Blade Share One Autumn

The next three months still have real Steam events. Xbox Game Studios has Gears of War: E-Day on October 6 for Xbox and PC, with Steam pre-purchase already open. Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is dated October 23, 2026 on Xbox’s store. S-GAME moved Phantom Blade Zero from September 9 to October 29, 2026, and the Steam page lists the standard edition at $59.99.

THE AUTUMN STEAM CALENDAR

1. October 6, 2026: Gears of War: E-Day unlocks on Steam and Xbox, with a campaign set 14 years before the original Gears.
2. October 23, 2026: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 arrives, with campaign early access listed from October 16 for some digital editions.
3. October 29, 2026: Phantom Blade Zero launches on Steam, PlayStation 5, and the Epic Games Store after S-GAME slipped it off September 9.

Those three will add hundreds of millions if they land. They will not rewrite the mix by themselves unless they also become catalog, complete with DLC, discounts, and a second life two Novembers from now. Elliott’s own September cut already had the top 100 new games at $2.4 billion against a $15 billion store, and the first half had new launches shrinking while old ones grew.

Alinea’s September note still calls 2026 a strong year for new Steam games. The six names at the top of the chart made a little under $1 billion, which is a lot of money and 15.9 percent of 2026 Steam revenue when you open the lens to 100 titles. The store that printed $15 billion by August is the one that already had the other 84 percent on the shelf.