How much revenue did The Witness make?

$9.8M–$26.2M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did The Witness sell?

Q: How many copies did The Witness sell?

887k to 1.4M copies, based on its 21k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 887k–1.4M; $9.8M–$26.2M after Steam's cut $17.7M–$40.3M before the cut; from 21k 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 The Witness out and predicted the genre from its 4 similar games. Every figure here, including The Witness's, is estimated from Steam reviews, not self-reported sales.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 2.8M–3.4M

best case 3.5M (Outer Wilds)

Games like The Witness

The middle of these games

≈ 2.8M–3.4M copies

≈ $19.9M–$34.9M after Steam's cut

from ~50k reviews

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

All 4 of your similar games are hits.

From a small set, so take it as a sketch.

Best case: Outer Wilds at ≈ 2.6M–4.3M copies, ≈ $18.2M–$48.9M after Steam's cut.

The genre you'd be entering

Your set: Your set clusters on Exploration (3 of 4) and Horror (2 of 4).
The winners: Winners here lead with Exploration + Space, priced around $25.
The era: The games you compared span 2009 to 2022, 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 79 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
Mirror's Edge™ 2009	Est. copies ≈ 2.5M–4.0M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $13.7M–$36.7M after Steam's cut $24.8M–$56.5M before the cut	$19.99	39k reviews Very Positive	Action-AdventureParkour
Inside the Backrooms 2022	Est. copies ≈ 1.2M–1.9M SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue $2.2M–$6.0M after Steam's cut $4.1M–$9.2M before the cut	$6.99	47k reviews Mostly Positive	HorrorMultiplayer
SOMA 2015	Est. copies ≈ 2.6M–4.2M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $21.1M–$56.7M after Steam's cut $38.4M–$87.3M before the cut	$29.99	52k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Horror Psychological Horror
Outer Wilds 2020	Est. copies ≈ 2.6M–4.3M 2.2x vs typical SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue $18.2M–$48.9M after Steam's cut $33.1M–$75.3M before the cut	$24.99	107k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	ExplorationSpace