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How many copies did Forward Defense sell?

Estimated copies sold
≈ 496–806
$954–$3k after Steam's cut $2k–$4k before the cut
from 20 reviews (Mostly 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 Forward Defense out and predicted the genre from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Forward Defense's, is estimated from Steam reviews, not self-reported sales.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 39k–49k
best case 443k (Outpost: Infinity Siege)
Games like Forward Defense

The middle of these games

≈ 39k–49k copies

≈ $143k–$168k after Steam's cut

from ~1k reviews

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

7 of your 8 similar games are hits.

Your picks lean toward this genre's biggest survivors; the typical figure reads from its ordinary successes.

Best case: Outpost: Infinity Siege at ≈ 338k–549k copies, ≈ $2.3M–$6.2M 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 4k reviews in their first month; the spread ran 328 to 10k.
The genre you'd be entering
Your set
Your set clusters on Base-Building (5 of 8) and Tower Defense (5 of 8).
The winners
Winners here lead with Base-Building, priced around $22. The breakout hits carry Base-Building + Resource Management + Tactical; a typical game here doesn't.
The era
5 of your 8 similar games shipped in the last two years. You'd be launching into a busy stretch.
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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Robots3D
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Tower DefenseStrategy
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RTSFPS

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