Steam's Record Half Was Built on Old Games: The Back Catalogue Is the Business

What Happened

According to estimates from Rhys Elliott, an analyst at games market research firm Alinea Analytics, Steam generated $11.1 billion in gross revenue in the first half of 2026, its biggest half-year ever. That is up 14.5% on the first half of 2025 and 8% above even the holiday-heavy second half of last year. In six months, Steam out-earned the whole of 2020 and nearly matched pandemic-peak 2021 (about $11.4 billion). By the time the report went out, the running total for 2026 had already reached $11.6 billion.

Premium releases carried the top of the chart. Forza Horizon 6 brought in roughly $197.7 million on Steam alone (3.5 million copies), Resident Evil Requiem about $194.5 million (3.4 million copies), and Pearl Abyss’s Crimson Desert over $190 million, all at $70 price points. Slay the Spire 2 added $141.7 million while still in early access (7.1 million copies), and Subnautica 2 another $133.6 million.

Here is the paradox: even with hits that size, games released in 2026 accounted for just 21% of first-half revenue, down from 29% in H1 2024 and 27% in H1 2025, and new-release revenue itself fell 6% year over year. The other 79% came from the back catalogue. Elliott credits the surge to a wave of new players in Asia, China especially, higher prices on major releases, viral co-op hits, smarter catalogue discounting and bundling by big publishers, and third parties quietly returning to Steam after abandoning their own-launcher experiments. All of this against a console backdrop of Xbox restructuring its studios and Sony announcing the end of disc production, which makes the PC storefront’s record year stand out even more.

What This Means for Founders

Steam’s real business is not launch hype, it is catalogue compounding. Every year’s releases stay on the shelf, get rediscovered, and sell again through discounts and bundles. A well-made product on Steam is not a launch event, it is a multi-year cash-flow asset. Two lessons travel well beyond games. First, launch day is the start of the revenue curve, not the end. Post-launch operations, meaning discount cadence, bundle placement, regional pricing, and updates that keep a product alive, now matter as much as launch marketing. Second, pricing power at the top of the market is real. The industry moved its flagship price to $70 and demand held; three $70 titles each cleared nearly $200 million on one storefront in six months. Reflexively underpricing a premium product is a choice, not a law of nature.

The platform-concentration story cuts both ways. Publishers that spent years building their own launchers to escape Steam’s 30% cut have drifted back, having learned that owning a distribution channel costs more than the fee it saves. Marketplaces where the traffic, payments, reviews, and community already live exert enormous gravity, and fighting that gravity is a capital-intensive strategy few can afford. For any founder selling digital goods, the practical question is the same one Steam’s numbers pose: is your product a catalogue asset that keeps selling after launch, or an event that spikes and disappears? The companies winning on Steam design for the former and treat the marketplace fee as rent on demand they could never generate alone.

What You Can Do Now

If you sell a digital product, write the 12-month post-launch revenue plan before launch: discount cadence, bundle partners, regional pricing, and the co-op or sharing mechanics that make old products resurface. Price against the value delivered, not against your own nerves; starting at full price and descending through promotions leaves far more room than starting cheap. And resist the binary on channels. Use the marketplace’s gravity where the buyers already are, but keep the direct lines, wishlists, communities, and mailing lists, in your own hands. That combination is what the 30% era actually rewards.