u/_C_47_

Good point. I reran it with launch price. The step stays: 12 in 100 past 1,000 reviews at $15 to $19.99, 25 in 100 at $20 to $29.99. Only games whose price never changed: 13 and 26.

Thanks, glad it was useful.

Paid games from January 2025 to June 2026 with 50+ reviews. Right above $20 there's no split, scores just drop a little (average 83% to 81%). The split you describe shows up at $40+: 32 in 100 games at 40–69% positive and 30 in 100 at 80–89%, fewer in between.

Fair, and I believe it's testable. Next I'll compare games priced well above similar games with games priced similarly. That's closer to "a wrong price" than this post.

My bad wording. You’re right about that table: higher price goes with more 1,000-review games. The second table (in my other reply) compares games with the same followers, and there the price makes no difference. So price isn't the reason.

It says the opposite, sorry if the post wasn't clear. With the same following, the higher price didn't add reviews (table above). The step only shows who prices at $20+.

True, but no one can measure the same game at two prices: Steam has no price A/B tests. Comparing similar games is as close as it gets.

Could be, and it's why I counted reviews, not sales. Estimates that convert reviews to copies usually assume cheap games have more buyers per review. So "same reviews at $24.99" doesn’t have to mean the same copies sold.

Agreed, so I checked by same following

What to take from it: with the same following, the higher price didn’t cost reviews. The jump in the post comes from who prices at $20+: 29% of those games had 10k+ followers, against 9% at $15 to 19.99.

Yes, that's in the post. The part that isn't obvious: it's not a smooth curve, it's one jump between $19.99 and $24.99, the same in 2025.

Data and chart are from SteamMaho, a Steam data site I'm building. The same post with the chart in it: https://steammaho.com/news/the-20-line-steam-games-priced-above-it-pass-1-000-reviews-twice-as-often. Forecasts I log before launch and grade after, misses included: https://steammaho.com/reports/scorecard

Agreed. Thanks for for pushing on it, it was a good question

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.

Thanks. Sure
Paid launches only, cozy/farming = tagged Cozy or Farming Sim on Steam, week-one peak players:

1k to 3k followers
Cozy/farming: 66 launches. Median 213. Middle half 45 to 528.
Everything else: 499 launches. Median 115. Middle half 36 to 371.

3k to 10k followers
Cozy/farming: 23 launches. Median 537. Middle half 377 to 1,116.
Everything else: 278 launches. Median 467. Middle half 101 to 1,597.

Sure. Paid games only, week-one peak players:

300 to 1,000 followers: 949 launches. Median 32. Middle half 9 to 131. Eight in ten between 3 and 511.

1,000 to 3,000 followers: 565 launches. Median 119. Middle half 38 to 400. Eight in ten between 12 and 1,184.

Nearly the same as the all-games bands in the chart. Free games are few in these bands (70 and 24) and only lift the top end of the 1k to 3k one.

On snapshot age. I split the same paid launches by how old the follower count was at release.

300 to 1k, count taken within 2 days of release: 44 launches, median 45, middle half 17 to 439. Count older than a week (681 launches, typically 3 weeks old): median 31, middle half 9 to 125.

1k to 3k, within 2 days: 28 launches, median 162, middle half 36 to 420. Older than a week: 366 launches, median 123, middle half 37 to 423.

You spotted a caveat: a count from three weeks out understates the following at launch, so some games sit one band lower than they should. That inflates the lower bands a little. I will keep the launch-week count where I have it.

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.

Sorry for discouraging data.
But you still have time to get more of them)
Good luck with the game

The chart with the ranges: https://steammaho.com/static/charts/launch-week-by-following-2026-10.png
The scorecard with the graded forecasts and the method: https://steammaho.com/reports/scorecard
Ask for any slice of this (a genre, a price band, free vs paid) and I will post the numbers here.

There's nothing to steal here. You paste a public profile link, the kind that's visible to anyone who opens your profile. No login, no password, no Steam sign-in, no cookies. It calls Steam's public API once for the owned-games list, the same call SteamDB and Steam Replay sites make. If your profile is private it just says so and stops.

Paste your Steam profile link, it reads your owned games and playtime through Steam's public API, and builds a card from what those games are actually made of (mechanics, not genre tags). Your profile has to be public for it to see the games. dna.steammaho.com

The twin game is the closest game you don't own, which is the part I'm curious whether people agree with.

It stores your SteamID, the card, and the game list for aggregate statistics; nothing is shown to anyone, and every card has a delete link. The mechanics come from a catalog I've been building for a year, AI-assisted and human-reviewed.

1000 reviews: 108 mechanics qualify, 55 pay better as side systems, median gap 1.27x.
100 reviews: 359 mechanics, 267 side, gap 1.68x.
10 reviews: 624 mechanics, 562 side, gap 3.6x.
But revenue estimates get pretty uncertain at low review counts, I also re-ran the floor-10 version on raw review counts instead of revenue: same situation, 551 of 624, 3.1x.
So the survivor bias you describe is real, and it all points one way: the deeper the tail is included, the stronger the side-system pattern gets.

Unfortunately below 10 stays unmeasured, because for such games are very little info. There is no wikis or reviews or guides, so it becomes unrealistic to properly assign mechanics.

By the way there is one more fresh example. How to Fish released five days ago and is already at 19,600 reviews, 94% positive.

Good point. Before answering I checked one thing: bigger games have longer mechanic lists in my data (median 10 tags in the under-$100k bracket vs 31 in the $10M+ one), partly because popular games have more text to read them from. So raw shares inflate with revenue, and I re-ran it only among games with 20-35 catalogued mechanics, comparing the $100k-1M bracket against $10M+.

What survives that control, share of games carrying it: Cover 5% vs 13%. Vehicle Driving 7% vs 18%. Open World 5% vs 14%. Weapon Customization 5% vs 12%. Fast Travel 9% vs 17%. Dodge 10% vs 17%. So yes, games that make $10M+ have a distinct profile, and it is an expensive-action-systems profile.

Only 47 games built around fishing ever reached 1000+ reviews, so the club is small. $1.65M medians and the ceiling of with Dredge at ~$25M. I would say worse pitches have been funded.

Dredge is the good counter-example in my data: it IS built around fishing (core mechanic in my catalog), about $25M estimated, 96% positive. The medians say fishing games usually earn less. They do not say fishing games are not allowed to win. A median hides its exceptions, and Dredge is a great one. Thank you!