How many copies did Protoball sell?

3k to 5k copies, based on its 121 Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

How much revenue did Protoball make?

Protoball is free to play, so there is no copy-sales revenue to estimate.

How big is Protoball?

Estimated owners: ≈ 3k–5k; from 121 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 Protoball out and predicted the genre from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Protoball's, is estimated from Steam reviews, not self-reported sales.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 2.8M–3.6M

best case 12.1M (VRChat)

Games like Protoball

The middle of these games

≈ 2.8M–3.6M copies

≈ $18.2M–$24.4M after Steam's cut

from ~80k 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 Sports (4 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: VRChat at ≈ 9.2M–15.0M copies. A breakout hit, far above a typical game.

What it took to get here

About half the games that made it here had over 18k reviews in their first month; the spread ran 14k to 26k.

The genre you'd be entering

Your set: Your set clusters on Sports (4 of 8) and VR (4 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with VR, priced around $20. The breakout hits carry VR + Anime + Memes; a typical game here doesn't.
The era: The games you compared span 2014 to 2023, 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
VRChat 2017	Est. copies ≈ 9.2M–15.0M 3.3x vs typical SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue Free	Free	268k reviews Mostly Positive	VRFree to Play
Rec Room 2021	Est. copies ≈ 2.1M–3.4M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue Free	Free	83k reviews Very Positive	Free to PlayVR
Beat Saber 2019	Est. copies ≈ 2.2M–3.6M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $12.1M–$32.5M after Steam's cut $21.9M–$49.9M before the cut	$19.99	76k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	VRRhythm
CarX Drift Racing Online 2017	Est. copies ≈ 3.1M–5.0M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $14.3M–$38.5M after Steam's cut $26.1M–$59.3M before the cut	$16.99	89k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	RacingPhysics
Golf With Your Friends 2020	Est. copies ≈ 1.9M–3.0M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $7.7M–$20.7M after Steam's cut $14.0M–$31.9M before the cut	$14.99	75k reviews Very Positive	MultiplayerCasual
Fishing Planet 2017	Est. copies ≈ 2.7M–4.3M SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue Free	Free	77k reviews Very Positive	FishingFree to Play
Assetto Corsa 2014	Est. copies ≈ 9.7M–15.8M 2.2x vs typical SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue $53.4M–$143.6M after Steam's cut $97.1M–$220.9M before the cut	$19.99	173k reviews Very Positive	RacingAutomobile Sim
EA SPORTS FC™ 24 2023	Est. copies ≈ 2.8M–4.5M SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue Free	Free	111k reviews Mixed	Football (Soccer)Sports