Slay the Spire 2 Sold 5.3 Million Copies in March. Early Access.
An Early Access deck-builder just beat Resident Evil and Crimson Desert to become March's biggest-selling game on Steam. Not close, either. Slay the Spire 2 sold an estimated 5.3 million copies and pulled in around $108 million in revenue in a single month. For a game that isn't even finished yet.
Mega Crit built something people actually wanted. That's the whole story, really. But let's look at the numbers because they're genuinely ridiculous.
The Numbers
Per Alinea Analytics analyst Rhys Elliott, Slay the Spire 2 outsold everything in March 2026 on Steam. Second place was Crimson Desert at 1.9 million copies. Resident Evil Requiem did 1.2 million and generated around $70 million, which sounds great until you stack it next to the deck-builder sitting at $108 million.
Within two weeks of launch, StS2 had already made more money on Steam than Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades 2. Both of those are massive games from beloved studios. Silksong was one of the most anticipated indie releases in years. Two weeks.
The Weird One: Climber Animals Together
The third-place story is stranger. Climber Animals Together sold 1.2 million copies in March, right alongside RE Requiem. The catch: it generated under $6 million. The price point is basically nothing. It had a quiet launch in 2024, then exploded in early 2026 after a self-release push in China through platforms like Douyu and Bilibili. That's a completely different distribution pipeline than most Western studios think about, and it worked.
One possibility is that we'll see more smaller games chase that path intentionally. The ceiling on revenue is low but the volume can get weird fast.
The RE3 Remake Thing
Resident Evil 3 Remake showed up with an estimated 994,000 units sold. That's because it was 90 percent off on Steam. So yeah, discounting a six-year-old game still moves nearly a million copies. Not surprising but worth noting if you're ever waiting for the right time to grab a Capcom back catalog game.
About That Beta Patch
Mega Crit already shipped a beta patch reverting changes to Prepared (Silent), Borrowed Time, and Capture Spirit (Necrobinder). Early Access means the balancing is live and messy, which is either annoying or part of the fun depending on how you feel about cards changing under you. I'm fine with it. The whole point of buying in early is watching the thing get tuned.
What This Actually Means
5.3 million copies of an unfinished deck-builder. The original Slay the Spire is one of the best games ever made in the genre, full stop. The sequel had genuine goodwill behind it going in. But this performance is a reminder that if you make something people actually love, the audience shows up. Even in Early Access. Even against a new Resident Evil.
If you haven't played the original and this is news to you, go fix that first. Then come back for 2.
Source: Eurogamer