Gaming · Saturday, 5 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Steam took $15bn this year. Its hundred biggest new games are a sixth of that.

Twelve thousand games launched on Steam in six months. Most of the money on the shop is going to games that were already there.

$15bn

taken by Steam, the biggest shop for computer games, in 2026 so far

an outside estimate by Alinea Analytics; Valve itself publishes nothing [1]

$2.4bn of $15bn

earned by the hundred biggest games released this year

15.9% of the shop's take, so most of the money is spent on games that were already out [1]

12,000

games put on Steam in the first half of 2026

19% more than the same six months of 2025 [3]

530 of 720

games launched in one week with fewer than ten reviews

the busiest week Steam has ever had; only ten of the 720 passed a thousand reviews [2]

The lead story — what happened

Steam, the biggest shop for computer games, has taken about $15 billion so far in 2026, according to Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics, a firm that estimates game sales from outside. [1]
The hundred highest-earning games released this year account for 15.9% of that, around $2.4 billion. [1]
Forza Horizon 6 was the biggest of them at $210.5 million, then Crimson Desert at $203.3 million and Resident Evil Requiem at $200.9 million. [1]
Those three, plus Slay the Spire 2, Subnautica 2 and Meccha Chameleon, come to 6.6% of Steam's whole year. [1]
Inside that top hundred, 63 games had no earlier version behind them. They took 47.5% of the money; older names took the rest. [1]
Crimson Desert alone is about 18% of what those brand-new games earned. Take it out and the other 62 fall to roughly 39%. [1]
Where the other $12.6 billion comes from is not broken out. Valve takes a cut of everything sold on Steam, including the extras sold inside games. [1]
About 12,000 games launched on Steam in the first six months of 2026, 19% more than the same months of 2025. [3]
In the last week of August, 720 launched in seven days, a record. 530 of them have fewer than ten player reviews and ten have more than a thousand. [2]
Amir Satvat, who tracks industry jobs, says the release count overstates the crowding: of roughly 20,000 games released in 2025, about 600 ever had a hundred people playing at once. [3]
Valve is privately owned and publishes no sales figures, so every number above is an estimate made from outside. [1]

Who is involved

Valve

the private US company that owns Steam and takes a cut of everything sold on it; it publishes no sales figures
Rhys Elliott

head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, which estimates game sales from outside; he produced the $15 billion figure
Thomas Bidaux

head of the consultancy ICO Partners, who has counted Steam releases for years; he logged the record 720-game week
Amir Satvat

a games industry researcher who runs a free job-help service; he told developers at Gamescom the release count overstates the competition

What is pushing on this

New games arriving High↑

12,000 in six months, up 19% on last year [3]

What a new game earns Easing↓

the top hundred take a sixth of the shop's money [1]

Spending on games already out High→

$12.6bn of the year is not this year's releases [1]

What anyone outside can check Easing→

Valve publishes no figures, so all of this is estimated [1]

How it unfolded

2013 436 games are released on Steam in the whole year [2]
2025 around 20,000 are released; roughly 600 of them ever reach a hundred players at once [3]
Jan-Jun 2026 about 12,000 arrive, 19% up on the same months last year [3]
24-30 August 720 launch in a single week, a record; 530 end it with under ten reviews [2]
3 September Alinea puts Steam's year at $15 billion, with the top hundred new games at $2.4bn of it [1]

Where this points

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Gears of War: E-Day and Phantom Blade Zero all arrive before December, so watch whether new games end the year above a sixth of Steam's take. [1]

The rest of the day

10 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Google keeps the business a court called an illegal monopoly

A US federal judge, Leonie Brinkema, refused the US Justice Department's request to make Google sell parts of its advertising business on Wednesday. [4][6] She had already ruled that Google illegally tied together the tool websites use to sell advertising space and the auction where that space is sold, making it very hard for customers to leave. [4][19] Instead of a sale she will impose rules on how Google behaves. Those rules are not public yet, because the two sides must first agree what to black out. [4][5][18] Publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell their space through that auction. [19]

Why it matters — This is the third US case in a year where a court found a Big Tech violation and stopped short of breaking anything up, after the Google search case and the Meta case. [6][7] Game companies have fought the same kind of case over the cut a storefront takes, including Epic Games against Apple, and this is what winning one has looked like. [11]
03
Sony and Microsoft ask two courts to bin the refund claims

Buyers sued both companies over 2025 console price rises they say were caused by US import taxes that the US Supreme Court later ruled illegal. [8] Sony asked a judge in northern California to dismiss, calling the claim speculative and illogical, and listing inflation, currency, component costs, logistics and demand as the reasons prices move. [8] It said it raised PlayStation 5 prices again after the taxes were struck down, which it argues proves the taxes were never the cause. [8] Microsoft filed a similar request in Washington state. [8]

Why it matters — Sony told investors in July it expected $508 million back in refunded import taxes, and that money lifted its quarterly operating profit by 37%. [8] If the dismissals work, Sony keeps the refund and the higher price, and nobody outside the company ever sees what a console costs to land.
04
A game nobody can play yet sold a third more consoles

Rockstar Games, the studio behind Grand Theft Auto, put a 30-minute preview of Grand Theft Auto 6 on Netflix at the end of August. The game itself is not out until November. [9] The trade newsletter The Games Business reported Nielsen IQ figures showing UK PlayStation 5 sales up 33% and Xbox sales up 34% in the week that followed. [9] PS5 Pro consoles sold out at the retailers Argos and Smyths Toys, and other sellers raised their prices. [9][10] UK console sales are still down 14.4% for the year, mostly on a 32% fall in PlayStation 5. [9]

Why it matters — Ronan Patrick of the research firm Newzoo expects more consoles in homes but nothing large. [9] He points out that a PlayStation 5 now costs 67% more than at launch once inflation is counted, and an Xbox twice as much. [9] Sony and Microsoft sold those consoles off a game they did not make and do not own.
05
Apple's App Store changes hands

Phil Schiller has stepped down from running Apple's App Store and its product events, Bloomberg reported; Apple has not announced it. [11] Schiller helped Steve Jobs create the store, ran it from 2015, set the share Apple takes from developers, and handled the company's long legal fight with Epic Games, which makes Fortnite. [11] The store goes back under Eddy Cue, who ran it before 2015, with Schiller's deputy Carson Oliver in day-to-day charge. [11] Schiller stays at Apple as a fellow. [11]

Why it matters — The App Store is where most mobile games are sold, and its rules on payments and on Apple's cut decide what a mobile studio keeps from every sale. [11] Those rules were one man's brief for a decade and are now somebody else's.
06
Tencent says the goal is games that never end

Yong-yi Zhu, who runs operations and strategy at Tencent Games, told GamesIndustry.biz that live service is the company's holy grail. [12] A live-service game keeps selling things to the same players for years instead of charging once. [12] Zhu named Honor of Kings, League of Legends and Valorant, all years old, as the company's DNA, saying such games provide stability to the studio. [12] Tencent, the Chinese internet company behind them, has parted with the British studios Splash Damage and Bulkhead in the past year. [12]

Why it matters — Zhu gave no reason beyond saying that for some studios Tencent cannot help them amplify their game. [12] One of the largest owners of game studios in the world is telling them the safe product is the one that never finishes.
07
A US county pitched Rockstar on rebuilding itself as Vice City

The mayor's office in Miami-Dade County, Florida sent Rockstar Games a pitch deck on 29 June, proposing to dress parts of the county as Grand Theft Auto 6, which is set in a version of Miami. [13] It offered branded planes and signs at Miami International Airport, game livery on the Metromover trains, custom manhole covers and a Vice City Motor Fest. [13] The county sheriff, Rosie Cordero-Stutz, and commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez objected in public. [13] A spokesperson for the mayor confirmed there had been some conversations with Rockstar. [13]

Why it matters — The sheriff and the commissioner said the county should promote the Miami-Dade it has worked to build, not a fictional version defined by crime and violence. [13] A local government is bidding for a share of a game's marketing budget, and its own police force is the obstacle.
08
The trade press answers the crash talk

GamesIndustry.biz ran a column on Friday pushing back on the talk of a second industry crash that has followed developers since Gamescom last month. [17] In the 1983 crash the American games business fell from over $3 billion in revenue to about $100 million by 1985, and analysts asked out loud whether video games had been a passing fad. [17] The column argues nothing like that is happening now: headline revenue is fine and games are an established medium with a huge audience. [17] It grants that this is no comfort to anyone who has lost a job. [17]

Why it matters — Tim Sweeney, head of Epic Games, called the present moment the worst crash since the 1980s. [17] Amir Satvat's Gamescom keynote put this year's announced job cuts at 14,666. [3] The money is growing and the jobs are going at the same time, and that is the argument the industry is now having with itself.
09
A developer built a review site that outvotes the critics

Thomas Mahler, lead developer on the Ori games and on the unfinished No Rest for the Wicked, launched VideoGamesCritic, a site that averages review scores. [14] It takes critic scores from the existing aggregator OpenCritic and combines them with player scores worked out from Steam reviews, weighting players at two-thirds. [14] It then rates each publication by how far its scores sit from the players'. [14] Mahler wrote that existing aggregators tell you how the press felt about a game, not how players did. [14]

Why it matters — Mahler said last year that being marked down by Steam reviewers could bankrupt his studio, and his new site now rests on those same reviewers. [14] An averaged score is how a lot of buyers decide whether to try a game they have never heard of, so who gets counted in one matters to every small studio.
10
Tomb Raider's remake was handed to a studio in Poland

Crystal Dynamics, the Californian studio that has made Tomb Raider games since the 1990s, has handed day-to-day development of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis to Flying Wild Hog in Poland. [16] The game is a remake of the 1996 original and launches on 12 February. [16] Game director Raul Siqueira said the two teams work as one, called Team Atlantis internally. [16] Flying Wild Hog has changed how it plays: first-aid kits are gone, replaced by potions and meals Lara Croft makes from ingredients she collects, and there is a skill tree. [16]

Why it matters — Crystal Dynamics has held the Tomb Raider name for thirty years and is now paying another company to build the game that carries it. [16] For a buyer deciding what to try in February, the name is the part doing the work.
11
NBA 2K27 goes on sale worldwide

2K released NBA 2K27, made by its Visual Concepts studio, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, Nintendo Switch 2 and Steam on Friday. [15] It is the twenty-seventh yearly edition of the same basketball series. [15] Visual Concepts president Greg Thomas said this year adds a MyCAREER Eras mode, the series' first mixed-gender City, a 100-year franchise mode and experience points on every MyTEAM card. [15]

Why it matters — Every addition Thomas named is aimed at somebody who already owns last year's edition and is deciding whether to buy this one. [15] A yearly sports game is one of the few products that never has to explain what it is.

02 Lesson why it matters

The cheapest thing a game can sell is a name you already know

A stranger's game has to be argued for and a familiar one does not, so the money keeps landing on sequels, remakes and games people already own.

The twist

The hard part of selling a game is no longer building it, it is getting a stranger to try it, and an old name skips that part completely.

How it works

Twelve thousand new games reach one shop in six months
A player has to be persuaded to try any of them
A game they already know needs no persuading
So the cheap thing to sell is a sequel, a remake or an extra
The money lands there, and the new names split what is left

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

Tencent says the goal is games that never end

the same step, chosen out loud: its three named games are years old, and it let go the British studios whose new games it could not push
NBA 2K27 goes on sale worldwide

the twenty-seventh yearly edition of one basketball game, sold on additions to modes rather than on the idea of the game
Tomb Raider's remake was handed to a studio in Poland

Crystal Dynamics is paying an outside team to rebuild a game from 1996, because the thirty-year-old name is what a buyer already recognises
A game nobody can play yet sold a third more consoles

UK PlayStation sales rose 33% on a preview of a game not out until November, because nobody had to be told what Grand Theft Auto is

Where you've seen this

Films

studios keep making sequels because the audience already knows the characters

Supermarket shelves

a new sauce has to pay for its space; the brand you grew up with is already on it

Hiring

a familiar university on a form saves the reader the work of judging the person

The catch

It is not a rule. Crimson Desert had no earlier version behind it and made $203.3 million on Steam this year, which is why thousands of studios keep trying.

And the whole of it

Everyone here is choosing sensibly. A player with two free hours opens the game they already like. A studio with a payroll picks the sequel. Valve takes its cut either way, and none of them decided that 12,000 new games a year would go unplayed.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Steam's $15 billion year is the number the games business quotes to show it is healthy, and most of it is money spent on games that were already out. The 12,000 games that launched there in six months are splitting about a sixth of it, and one of them, Crimson Desert, earned $203.3 million of that.

Why it works on us — A total is easy to repeat and a share is not, so $15 billion travels and 12,000 games splitting a sixth of it does not.

Who gains

Valve — It takes a cut of everything sold on Steam, and about $12.6bn of this year's $15bn was not spent on 2026 releases, so its year does not depend on any launch working. [1]
Google — It keeps the ad exchange and the publisher tool a court found it had illegally tied together, and the remedy is a set of conduct rules it helped propose. [4][6]
Sony and Microsoft — They kept the 2025 price rises, and Sony expects $508 million in refunded import taxes on top; the dismissal requests would end the claim on both. [8]
Rockstar Games — A 30-minute preview of an unreleased game emptied UK shelves of PS5 Pros and drew a US county offering to redecorate its airport. [9][13]
Owners of old names — 2K's basketball series reached its twenty-seventh yearly edition and Crystal Dynamics is remaking a 1996 game, both selling something buyers already recognise. [15][16]

Who pays

The 12,000 developers who put a game on Steam this year — 530 of the 720 released in one August week ended it with fewer than ten reviews, and the top hundred new games took only 15.9% of the shop's money. [2][1]
People who bought a PlayStation 5 or Xbox after the 2025 rises — The US Supreme Court struck the import taxes down, the companies kept the money, and Sony raised prices again. [8]
UK console buyers this week — PS5 Pro stock ran out at Argos and Smyths Toys and other sellers put prices up on the remaining machines. [9][10]
The US Justice Department and the states that sued Google — They proved the tie was illegal, asked for a sale, and are getting behaviour rules that stay sealed until both sides agree what to black out. [4][5]
Splash Damage and Bulkhead — Both British studios are now outside Tencent, and the only explanation given was that for certain studios it cannot help amplify their game. [12]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

What Steam's $15 billion is actually made of.

Valve is privately owned and publishes no sales figures. The total, the split and every game's revenue here are estimates by Alinea Analytics, made from outside. [1]
02

What the judge is ordering Google to do.

Leonie Brinkema said she would adopt most of the behaviour changes the two sides proposed, with her own modifications, and the opinion stays sealed until they agree what to black out. [4][5]
03

Whether the console price rises had anything to do with import taxes.

Sony calls the claim speculative and illogical, and also told investors it expected $508 million back in refunded taxes. Only the companies hold the cost breakdown that would settle it. [8]
04

How many consoles the Grand Theft Auto 6 preview actually sold.

Nielsen IQ has UK PlayStation 5 sales up 33% for the week; VGC has UK hardware down 14.4% for the year. Both are true and neither says where the year ends. [9]
05

Whether Miami-Dade will run the Grand Theft Auto promotion at all.

The mayor's office confirmed conversations with Rockstar, the sheriff and a commissioner are against it, and Rockstar has said nothing in public. [13]
06

Who now writes Apple's App Store rules.

Apple has not announced the change. Bloomberg reported that the store moves back to Eddy Cue with Carson Oliver running it daily, and Apple has not said what happens to the developer terms Schiller set. [11]
07

Why Tencent released Splash Damage and Bulkhead.

Yong-yi Zhu would not go into detail, saying only that for certain studios the company cannot help them amplify their game. [12]
08

Whether a player-weighted review score measures anything different.

Thomas Mahler's site takes critic scores from OpenCritic and mixes them with trust-weighted maths on Steam reviews. The weighting is not published in a form anyone can check. [14]

04 Hope carry this

Crimson Desert is a brand-new game with no earlier version behind it. It has taken $203.3 million on Steam this year, more than Resident Evil Requiem did.

Also true today

Of the hundred biggest new games on Steam this year, 63 had no earlier game behind them.