Saturday, October 3rd 2026
Steam on Track for $20 Billion Year After Record $1.7 Billion September
Steam reportedly just had its best September on record. Alinea Analytics estimates that the platform generated a hefty $1.7 billion last month, up 13% from September 2025, which held the previous record. The third quarter was also Steam's best to date at $5.5 billion, a 12% increase year over year. That puts the 2026 total at $16.5 billion after nine months, compared to $14.5 billion in the same period last year, and well past the $11.1 billion it made in the first half. Valve doesn't publish these figures, so all of this is Alinea's estimate. Bulkhead's early access shooter Wardogs was the top premium game with $86.9 million after launching on September 10, followed by Onimusha: Way of the Sword at $30.4 million and The Blood of Dawnwalker at $26.9 million.
Free-to-play is still a big part of the picture, however. Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, PUBG, and Dota 2 brought in almost $168 million combined, nearly 10% of the month's total. Alinea also noted that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, a free upgrade for existing owners, pushed the 11-year-old game to roughly 2.4 million daily active users across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox on its September 30 launch day, over ten times its 2026 average. All of this spending comes at a time when PC hardware is anything but cheap. Valve's own Steam Machine starts at $1,049, and Micron expects memory supply to be much tighter in 2027 and 2028. The analytics suggest people are buying games regardless, and Alinea expects Steam to cross $20 billion in a year for the first time. With the Q4 release slate still to come, that looks to be a safe bet.
Source:
Alinea Analytics
Free-to-play is still a big part of the picture, however. Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, PUBG, and Dota 2 brought in almost $168 million combined, nearly 10% of the month's total. Alinea also noted that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, a free upgrade for existing owners, pushed the 11-year-old game to roughly 2.4 million daily active users across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox on its September 30 launch day, over ten times its 2026 average. All of this spending comes at a time when PC hardware is anything but cheap. Valve's own Steam Machine starts at $1,049, and Micron expects memory supply to be much tighter in 2027 and 2028. The analytics suggest people are buying games regardless, and Alinea expects Steam to cross $20 billion in a year for the first time. With the Q4 release slate still to come, that looks to be a safe bet.
19 Comments on Steam on Track for $20 Billion Year After Record $1.7 Billion September
However, Valve's still probably one of the most consumer-friendly companies out there, so honestly, good on them for finding success in these economically dark times.
Also this isn't totally true as each countiry has different laws for monoplies. Its region specific.
Nobody knows what kinds of contracts that Valve has with publishers, so it could be billions off
All we know is that Steam is the juggernaut for PC gaming, and while Epic is trying, it's only a drop in the bucket
Steam does not have a monopoly. You can easily play every AAA game out there today without touching the platform. In fact they would prefer you do that so they make more $$$. Same for forums, voice chat, ece.
Casual Article - [link]
Link to Class-Action Complaint PDF for the Basis of a Suit in 2024-2025 - [link]
The good you've done for videogames and PCs is immeasurable. Get another one Gabe! You handsome rascal you.
NOTHING I SAID HAD THING TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT ACCESSING TO GAMES.
It had to do with the fact steam controls absoutle bottom line pricing for "Sale pricing" on ALL PLATFORMS if the game is ever listed on steam too, the worlds largest pc gaming platform. Which in turn depending on the country can BE considered a monoply & abude of msrket position power
Major sales of the year (Summer, Autumn & etc) were terrible literally.
Me: Let's buy Forza Horizon 6 at summer sale. Me after two minutes: Thanks God it stands at full price!
Those timed sales were so epic (no pun intended).
There is a legacy game developed by Valve with such severe flaws that players in certain regions cannot play online properly; Valve has known about this issue for over a decade yet done nothing, even though fixing it would cost a mere $500,000—a tiny fraction (1/40,000th) of its $20 billion revenue—to hire four or five programmers for a year.
Incidentally, Cloudflare generates only about $2.1 billion in revenue, yet it provides free DDoS protection to websites across the internet at no cost; meanwhile, Valve, with its $20 billion revenue, chooses to wring the hard-earned money out of small and medium-sized developers. It makes me laugh whenever I see people singing the praises of Gabe Newell and Valve, hailing them as brilliant or worthy of that $20 billion figure—it is truly a sign of staggering ignorance.
I do not want a corporation - outside of reason - to overly dictate what is allowed/disallowed from the diaspora of humanity that just happens to use their platform. Neither do you.
It's how you get a Visa/Mastercard crusade against CP (great!) to misfire and intimidate storefronts into the loss of thousands of adult video games (bad!) because of a lobbying group (extremely bad!). A little place called Weimar Germany did something similar while wearing red arm bands I think. I'll have to check my dusty tomes of history. /s
Thy doth not know what thine ask.And now you've moved from arguing for Morality Police to arguing for Corporation on Corporation Business Model warfare.
Who is Valve to tell other companies how to conduct their business?Good for them. That's their choice.Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man.
You seem to be arguing for some kind of socially conscious, morally directed, Justice on the part of corporations. I understand the humanity of it.
I also understand the Youth of it.
That will change with time.
(I know it's a new TPU Account, which isn't a knock against. But... am I being trolled right now??)