I tracked 10,310 Steam launches since March. Here is what week-one peak players look like for each follower count.
Follower count on the Steam store page, read before launch, against peak concurrent players in the first seven days. 10,310 launches between 14 March and 9 October 2026, every game that went from coming soon to released and had a player count we could read.
Middle launch by following: under 300 followers, 1 player. 300 to 1,000 followers, 36. 1,000 to 3,000, 124. 3,000 to 10,000, 534. 10,000 to 30,000, 2,204. 30,000 to 100,000, 18,000. Over 100,000, 222,000.
The ranges are wide. With 3,000 to 10,000 followers, 8 in 10 launches opened between 31 and 5,964 players. The middle half of them opened between 136 and 1,773. A follower count predicts the size of the launch, not the exact number.
A follower is worth more the more of them you have. The middle launch under 1,000 followers got about 6 players per 100 followers. At 10,000 to 30,000 it got 15 per 100. At 100,000 and up, about one player per follower. The games with big followings are mostly famous names, and famous names bring players who never followed the page.
88 in 100 launches opened under 100 players. 7,578 of the 10,310 opened under 10.
Method notes: followers are the last count before launch, not the launch-day count (median 17 days old). Peak is the highest concurrent count in the seven days after release, read from Steam's public numbers. The pool is every tracked launch, so free and paid, hobby and studio sit together; the bands by following are the same whether or not the price is in them. I also write ranges like these down for named games before they launch and grade them in public afterwards: 11 graded so far, 7 inside, 4 above, every miss a famous name.
24 comments · 68% upvoted · other discussions
I see my new game with 80 followers is gonna flop hard. Thanks for the data.
PhilippTheProgrammer 15 points · 8d ago
The reason why this person data-mined followers is because it's a publicly available metric. So it can be used to predict the performance of other people's games. But if it's your own game you have much better data available.
Instead of your follower count you should rather look at your wishlist count. Wishlists are a much better predictor than followers. You can usually expect that somewhere between 5% and 20% of people who wishlisted your game are going to buy it. Where between those numbers depends mostly on how good your game turns out at launch and how you price it.
_C_47_ [OP] 3 points · 8d ago
Agreed: if it's your own game, your wishlist count is the better number, and nobody should read a flop off 80 followers. Followers are what I track because they're the only pre-launch count visible from outside, and I grade these ranges in public on games I don't own, so I need a number everyone can check.
Two small things: followers and wishlists are different people (you can follow without wishlisting and the other way round), and the 5 to 20% figure is wishlists turning into sales over the launch window, while the chart is peak concurrent players in week one.
PhilippTheProgrammer 2 points · 8d ago
You should also keep in mind that the relation between PCU and sales can differ a lot. Long games will have a much higher ratio than short games. Maybe you could find a stronger correlation if you also looked at the average playtime according to the reviews?
Gaverion 1 points · 7d ago
Is there a conversion rate for concurrent players to sales?
_C_47_ [OP] 1 points · 6d ago
Roughly, yes. From 181 games whose developers disclosed sales publicly, sales divided by the game's all-time peak concurrent players:
So a game peaking at 100 players has typically sold somewhere in the thousands, with a wide spread. Big games run lower because their peak is a crowd event, while small games keep selling for years after a quiet peak.
This is the all-time peak, not week one, and the sales are lifetime figures disclosed at different ages. Studios disclose more often when things went well, so treat it as a rough rule, not a calculator.
_C_47_ [OP] 3 points · 8d ago
Sorry for discouraging data.
But you still have time to get more of them)
Good luck with the game