Steam Made $11 Billion in Six Months and Old Games Did Most of the Work
Steam just had its most profitable six months in 22 years. January through June 2026: $11 billion. To put that in perspective, Steam made $7.2 billion during the entire pandemic year of 2020, when everyone was locked inside with nothing to do but buy games. The platform nearly matched its entire 2021 ($11.4 billion, still its best full year on record) in half the time. That's a genuinely insane number.
But the interesting story isn't the $11 billion. It's where that money actually came from.
79% of What People Bought Wasn't From 2026
Only 21% of Steam purchases in H1 2026 were for games released this year. The other 79% went to stuff from 2025 or older. That's not a rounding error. That's the whole story.
And the trend is moving in that direction. In 2024, 29% of Steam's revenue came from games released that year. In 2025, it dropped to 27%. Now we're at 21% for the first half of 2026.
People are buying backcatalogues. Old favorites. Games they missed. Sales they finally gave in to. The library is doing work that new releases aren't.
This could mean a few things. One possibility is that the volume of new releases has gotten so high that players are more selective, gravitating back to proven games instead of gambling on new ones. Another is that the growing pool of newer Steam users, particularly in Asia, are catching up on years of games they didn't have access to before. Probably both.
What Actually Topped the Charts
Three games dominated the top earner spots. Forza Horizon 6 pulled $197.6 million. Resident Evil Requiem right behind it at $194.5 million. Crimson Desert at $190.1 million for third. Those are real numbers, not rounding, and they're all clustered tight enough that launch timing probably mattered more than anything else.
Then there's Meccha Chameleon sitting at sixth most-purchased. A co-op game that went viral. I don't have hours in it but it's the kind of title that shows up when a game catches something online and just runs. The kind of game friends buy because other friends already have it.
That's its own category of success and it's worth paying attention to.
Why Steam Is Growing This Fast
According to data aggregated by Alinea Analytics (reported by Rhys Elliott in the Alinea Insights Newsletter), several things are driving this. A surge of new users in Asia, specifically China. Higher game prices across the board. Viral co-op titles pulling in groups of players at once. Third-party publishers returning to Steam after platform experiments elsewhere. And publishers re-releasing back catalogues, which feeds directly into that 79% older-games number.
Steam's half-year revenue has nearly quintupled over the last ten years. That's not a hot streak. That's a structural shift in how and where people buy games.
The Steam Machine is also described as forthcoming. What that does to the numbers, hardware side especially, remains to be seen.
What This Actually Means
If you're a player, this is mostly good news. A platform this profitable has no reason to break what's working. Sales stay aggressive. Library keeps growing. Older games stay available because publishers have financial incentive to keep them listed and visible.
The backcatalogue dominance is interesting from a practical standpoint too. If 79% of buyers are going for older titles, the recommendation algorithms are probably pushing those heavily. Which means if you've been sleeping on something from 2023 or 2024, Steam is actively trying to sell it to you right now.
That's not a bad situation to be a game buyer in.
Source: Ign