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How many copies did Trolley Problem, Inc. sell?

Estimated copies sold
≈ 39k–64k
$119k–$320k after Steam's cut $216k–$492k before the cut
from 2k 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 Trolley Problem, Inc. out and predicted the genre from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Trolley Problem, Inc.'s, is estimated from Steam reviews, not self-reported sales.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 731k–1.9M
best case 2.9M (Noita)
Games like Trolley Problem, Inc.

The middle of these games

≈ 731k–1.9M copies

≈ $4.8M–$9.2M after Steam's cut

from ~21k 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.

No genre covers most of your similar games. The closest is Choices Matter (3 of 8), so the genre you lead with is still undecided.

Of the 416 indie games that passed 1,000 reviews in 2022, 11.8% were novel genre mixes and 88.2% stuck to an established genre. Published indie market research.

Best case: Noita at ≈ 2.2M–3.6M copies, ≈ $12.1M–$32.5M after Steam's cut.

What it took to get here
About half the games that made it here had over 4k reviews in their first month; the spread ran 1k to 17k.
The genre you'd be entering
Your set
Your set clusters on Choices Matter (3 of 8) and Dark Humor (3 of 8).
The winners
Winners here lead with Physics + Rogue-like, priced around $20.
The era
The games you compared span 2014 to 2020, and none of them 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 70 for the oldest, then widened into a range; revenue rides on that estimate times price. Source: GameDiscoverCo (2020) and VG Insights (2021).

Similar games

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2DChoose Your Own Adventure
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Choose Your Own AdventureSimulation
UNO
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≈ 1.9M–3.0M
2.6x vs typical
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Card GameMultiplayer
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≈ 695k–1.1M
SteamSpy 1M–2M
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$3.8M–$10.3M after Steam's cut $6.9M–$15.8M before the cut
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Story RichAdventure
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≈ 1.3M–2.1M
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Dystopian Choices Matter
Spelunky 2
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Platformer2D Platformer
LISA: The Painful
2014
Est. copies
≈ 849k–1.4M
SteamSpy 500k–1M
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2020
Est. copies
≈ 2.2M–3.6M
4.2x vs typical
SteamSpy 2M–5M
Est. revenue
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$19.99
89k reviews
Overwhelmingly Positive
PhysicsRogue-like

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