How much revenue did Vertical Slice: A Game Dev Story make?

$23k–$61k after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did Vertical Slice: A Game Dev Story sell?

Q: How many copies did Vertical Slice: A Game Dev Story sell?

8k to 13k copies, based on its 332 Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 8k–13k; $23k–$61k after Steam's cut $41k–$94k before the cut; from 332 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 Vertical Slice: A Game Dev Story out and predicted the genre from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Vertical Slice: A Game Dev Story's, is estimated from Steam reviews, not self-reported sales.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 1.4M–2.1M

best case 40.4M (Wallpaper Engine)

Games like Vertical Slice: A Game Dev Story

The middle of these games

≈ 1.4M–2.1M copies

≈ $7.6M–$12.1M after Steam's cut

from ~45k 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: Wallpaper Engine at ≈ 30.8M–50.0M copies, ≈ $42.2M–$113.5M after Steam's cut. A breakout hit, far above a typical game.

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 4k to 64k.

The genre you'd be entering

Your set: Your set clusters on Story Rich (5 of 8) and Anime (3 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with First-Person, priced around $10. The breakout hits carry First-Person + Mature + Utilities; a typical game here doesn't.
The era: The games you compared span 2016 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 52 for the oldest, then widened into a range; revenue rides on that estimate times price. Source: GameDiscoverCo (2020) and VG Insights (2021).

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