How much revenue did NBA 2K21 make?

NBA 2K21 is free to play, so there is no copy-sales revenue to estimate.

How many copies did NBA 2K21 sell?

Q: How many copies did NBA 2K21 sell?

963k to 1.6M copies, based on its 39k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 963k–1.6M; from 39k reviews (Mixed)

A labeled estimate from the public review count (adjusted for release year), not exact sales. Owner data cross-checked with SteamSpy.

Does this actually work?

We left NBA 2K21 out and predicted the genre from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including NBA 2K21's, is estimated from Steam reviews, not self-reported sales.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 1.4M–1.7M

best case 2.3M (NBA 2K20)

Games like NBA 2K21

The middle of these games

≈ 1.4M–1.7M copies

≈ $37.8M after Steam's cut

from ~44k reviews

Only the top fifth of 2019’s Steam releases earned about $34k gross, so plan for that or less.

All 8 of your similar games are hits.

Best case: NBA 2K20 at ≈ 1.7M–2.8M copies.

What it took to get here

About half the games that made it here had over 7k reviews in their first month; the spread ran 5k to 12k.

The genre you'd be entering

Your set: Your set clusters on Sports (8 of 8) and Basketball (7 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with Basketball + Sports.
The era: The games you compared span 2015 to 2024, and 1 of your 8 shipped in the last two years.

How these numbers were worked out

A hit here: 1,000+ reviews, roughly $150k+ before Steam's cut (a standard indie benchmark).

Copies come from each game's reviews times a sales-per-review rate that falls with release age, from about 31 for the most recent game here to about 61 for the oldest, then widened into a range; revenue rides on that estimate times price. Source: GameDiscoverCo (2020) and VG Insights (2021).

Similar games

Game	Est. copies	Est. revenue	Price	Reviews	Tags
NBA 2K23 2022	Est. copies ≈ 1.3M–2.1M SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue Free	Free	51k reviews Mixed	Immersive SimBasketball
NBA 2K24 2023	Est. copies ≈ 1.1M–1.8M SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue Free	Free	44k reviews Mostly Negative	SportsBasketball
NBA 2K19 2018	Est. copies ≈ 686k–1.1M too small to compare SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue Free	Free	23k reviews Mostly Negative	SportsBasketball
NBA 2K25 2024	Est. copies ≈ 1.1M–1.7M SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue $20.5M–$55.0M after Steam's cut $37.2M–$84.7M before the cut	$69.99	43k reviews Mixed	SportsBasketball
Soccer Online: Ball 3D 2017	Est. copies ≈ 367k–596k too small to compare SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue $100k–$269k after Steam's cut $182k–$413k before the cut	$0.99	11k reviews Very Positive	SportsFootball (Soccer)
NBA 2K22 2021	Est. copies ≈ 964k–1.6M SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue Free	Free	39k reviews Mixed	SportsBasketball
NBA 2K20 2019	Est. copies ≈ 1.7M–2.8M SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue Free	Free	60k reviews Mixed	BasketballSports
Freestyle 2: Street Basketball 2015	Est. copies ≈ 622k–1.0M too small to compare SteamSpy 200k–500k	Est. revenue Free	Free	13k reviews Mostly Positive	BasketballSports