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How many copies did Whale Captain sell?

Estimated copies sold
≈ 149–242
$123–$330 after Steam's cut $223–$507 before the cut
from 6 reviews (6 user reviews)
Thin evidence: 6 reviews. That range swings on one or two people, so read it as a hint, not a measurement.

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

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 117k–431k
best case 10.0M (Cuphead)
Games like Whale Captain

The middle of these games

≈ 117k–431k copies

≈ $597k–$2.7M after Steam's cut

from ~4k 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: Cuphead at ≈ 7.6M–12.3M copies, ≈ $41.7M–$112.1M 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 2k reviews in their first month; the spread ran 873 to 3k.
The genre you'd be entering
Your set
Your set clusters on Bullet Hell (6 of 8) and Side Scroller (4 of 8).
The winners
Winners here lead with Co-op + Platformer, priced around $20. The breakout hits carry Cartoon + Co-op + Great Soundtrack; a typical game here doesn't.
The era
The games you compared span 2013 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 79 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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DifficultCartoon

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