How much revenue did Paper Trail make?

$130k–$351k after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did Paper Trail sell?

Q: How many copies did Paper Trail sell?

24k to 39k copies, based on its 957 Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 24k–39k; $130k–$351k after Steam's cut $237k–$540k before the cut; from 957 reviews (Very Positive)

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 Paper Trail out and predicted the genre from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Paper Trail's, is estimated from Steam reviews, not self-reported sales.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 694k–1.1M

best case 1.5M (We Were Here)

Games like Paper Trail

The middle of these games

≈ 694k–1.1M copies

≈ $1.5M–$3.1M after Steam's cut

from ~18k 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 Exploration (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: We Were Here at ≈ 1.1M–1.8M copies.

The genre you'd be entering

Your set: Your set clusters on Exploration (3 of 8) and Puzzle (3 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with Co-op + Escape Room.
The era: The games you compared span 2014 to 2021, 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

Game	Est. copies	Est. revenue	Price	Reviews	Tags
Mountain 2014	Est. copies ≈ 912k–1.5M SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $248k–$668k after Steam's cut $452k–$1.0M before the cut	$0.99	16k reviews Very Positive	SimulationIndie
Webbed 2021	Est. copies ≈ 378k–615k SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $1.0M–$2.8M after Steam's cut $1.9M–$4.3M before the cut	$9.99	15k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	2D PlatformerCute
Townscaper 2021	Est. copies ≈ 536k–871k SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue $883k–$2.4M after Steam's cut $1.6M–$3.7M before the cut	$5.99	22k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	ExperimentalBuilding
We Were Here Together 2019	Est. copies ≈ 509k–827k SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $1.8M–$4.9M after Steam's cut $3.3M–$7.5M before the cut	$12.99	18k reviews Very Positive	PuzzleOnline Co-Op
FAR: Lone Sails 2018	Est. copies ≈ 802k–1.3M 1.5x vs typical SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $3.3M–$8.9M after Steam's cut $6.0M–$13.7M before the cut	$14.99	26k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	AtmosphericAdventure
Refunct 2015	Est. copies ≈ 852k–1.4M SteamSpy 200k–500k	Est. revenue $701k–$1.9M after Steam's cut $1.3M–$2.9M before the cut	$2.99	17k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Parkour3D Platformer
Cat Goes Fishing 2015	Est. copies ≈ 803k–1.3M SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $1.5M–$4.2M after Steam's cut $2.8M–$6.4M before the cut	$6.99	16k reviews Very Positive	FishingCats
We Were Here 2017	Est. copies ≈ 1.1M–1.8M 1.9x vs typical SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue Free	Free	33k reviews Very Positive	Free to PlayCo-op