$11.1 billion in six months, up 14.5%. but the share coming from games actually released this year dropped to 21%, from 27% a year ago. Steam has never made more money — or cared less about new releases.
Steam is having its most lucrative stretch in history: roughly $11.1 billion in gross game revenue in the first half of 2026, up about 14.5% year over year, on top of concurrent-user records north of 42 million set earlier in the year. But dig into where that money comes from and there's a number that should worry anyone launching a game in 2026: only 21% of it came from games actually released this year. A year ago that figure was 27%. Before that, 29%. Steam has never made more money, and it's never made less of it from new releases.
~$11.1B
H1 2026 revenue
gross game revenue, up 14.5% YoY
21%
From 2026 releases
down from 27% in 2025
42.3M
Peak concurrent
an all-time record set earlier in 2026
29% → 27% → 21%
3-year trend
new-games share falling every year
Where the money actually goes
Share of Steam spending on games released that year
H1 202429%
H1 202527%
H1 202621%
The other ~79% flows to the back catalog and, above all, to evergreen live-service giants — Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, PUBG and their peers — plus deep-discount sales of older games during events like the Summer Sale (June 25–July 9 this year). These titles don't 'release'; they just keep earning, year after year, soaking up player time and money that never reaches this year's new games.
Why the 21% is a real problem, not a curiosity
For a big publisher, a smaller slice of a growing pie is still fine. For indie and AA developers, this is the discoverability crisis in a single statistic. A record number of games launch on Steam every year, competing for a shrinking share of spending, against a wall of established live-service titles that already own players' hours. It means a genuinely good new game can land into near-silence not because it's bad, but because the platform's economics increasingly reward the games people are already playing. The 21% figure is the clearest evidence yet that 'get it on Steam' is no longer close to a plan.
None of this is Steam failing — it's Steam succeeding so completely that its own back catalog has become the main competition for every new release. If you're making a game in 2026, the platform has never been bigger, and standing out on it has never been harder. Those two facts are the same fact.
