How much revenue did Outer Wilds make?

$18.2M–$48.9M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did Outer Wilds sell?

Q: How many copies did Outer Wilds sell?

2.6M to 4.3M copies, based on its 107k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 2.6M–4.3M; $18.2M–$48.9M after Steam's cut $33.1M–$75.3M before the cut; from 107k reviews (Overwhelmingly 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 Outer Wilds out and predicted the genre from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Outer Wilds's, is estimated from Steam reviews, not self-reported sales.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 348k–854k

best case 1.5M (Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader)

Games like Outer Wilds

The middle of these games

≈ 348k–854k copies

≈ $3.4M–$5.3M after Steam's cut

from ~11k 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 Sci-fi (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: Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader at ≈ 1.2M–1.9M copies, ≈ $16.2M–$43.6M after Steam's cut.

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 2k to 10k.

The genre you'd be entering

Your set: Your set clusters on Sci-fi (4 of 8) and Story Rich (4 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with Character Customization + Cinematic, priced around $50.
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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Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader 2023	Est. copies ≈ 1.2M–1.9M 4.2x vs typical SteamSpy 10M–20M	Est. revenue $16.2M–$43.6M after Steam's cut $29.5M–$67.0M before the cut	$49.99	48k reviews Very Positive	Character CustomizationCinematic
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Deliver Us The Moon 2019	Est. copies ≈ 275k–447k SteamSpy 200k–500k	Est. revenue $1.9M–$5.1M after Steam's cut $3.4M–$7.8M before the cut	$24.99	10k reviews Very Positive	AdventureIndie
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The Invincible 2023	Est. copies ≈ 327k–531k SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $2.7M–$7.2M after Steam's cut $4.9M–$11.2M before the cut	$29.99	13k reviews Very Positive	AdventureRobots
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