Steam's first half of 2026 was its biggest ever — $11.1 billion in six months

Alinea Analytics estimates Steam generated $11.1 billion in gross revenue in the first half of 2026 — the platform's highest-ever half-year result. That figure is up 14.5% on H1 2025 and, more strikingly, up 8% even on H2 2025, which normally wins on holiday sales. Analyst Rhys Elliott called it a record-breaker, noting Steam did more in the first six months of 2026 than in all of 2020, when the entire world was locked indoors buying games to cope.

Several forces are driving the surge. Higher prices on new releases — $70 standard, $100 in some markets — are a major factor, as are viral co-op hits like Meccha Chameleon, the return of third-party publishers like Ubisoft who abandoned their own launchers and came crawling back to Steam, and a massive influx of Asian users, with the Chinese market especially prominent (50% of all Steam accounts belonged to Chinese-speaking users as far back as February 2025). The top five new releases by gross revenue were Forza Horizon 6 ($197.7m), Resident Evil Requiem ($194.5m), Crimson Desert ($190m), Slay the Spire 2 ($141.7m), and Subnautica 2 ($133.6m) — with Meccha Chameleon sneaking into sixth at $71.3m. Despite those blockbuster launches, only 21% of Steam's 2026 revenue came from games released this year, down from 29% in 2024 and 27% in 2025 — meaning 79% of purchases were for older titles.

Zoom out and the picture gets even more dramatic. Steam's yearly revenue has grown from $5.5 billion in 2017 to roughly $20 billion in 2025 — nearly quintupling its half-year revenue over a decade. This growth is happening while console platforms are struggling: Microsoft's gaming revenue is down 7% year-on-year, Xbox just went through another brutal round of studio closures, and PlayStation has announced it will stop bringing future single-player exclusives to PC. The PC market, meanwhile, is outpacing both mobile and console growth. The back-catalogue trend is also worth flagging — it mirrors what home video did for Hollywood, turning films like Fight Club into long-tail hits years after release, and it arguably points toward a healthier publishing model than the industry's current obsession with launch-window returns.

With a dense autumn release schedule still ahead, Elliott expects Steam to tip into a full-year record. The platform has already nearly matched its entire 2021 revenue of $11.4 billion in just six months. Whether the broader industry can capitalise on that momentum — rather than continuing to shut down the studios generating it — is the question nobody has a good answer to yet.