How much revenue did Calico make?

$411k–$1.1M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did Calico sell?

Q: How many copies did Calico sell?

125k to 203k copies, based on its 5k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 125k–203k; $411k–$1.1M after Steam's cut $748k–$1.7M before Steam's cut; from 5k reviews (Very Positive)

Copies are estimated from the public review count, adjusted for release year, and cross-checked against SteamSpy's own estimate.

Did the prediction match what actually happened?

We hid Calico and predicted how it would do from its 4 similar games. Every figure here, including Calico's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 952k–1.4M

best case 2.0M (NEKOPARA Vol. 1)

Games like Calico

A typical game among these

≈ 952k–1.4M copies

≈ $2.5M–$4.7M after Steam's cut

from ~19k reviews

Only the top fifth of 2019's Steam releases earned $34k or more before Steam's cut, so plan for that or less.

All 4 of the similar games are hits.

This comes from a small set of games, so take it as a sketch.

No genre covers most of these similar games. The closest is Anime (2 of 4), so its genre is hard to place.

Of the 416 indie games that passed 1,000 reviews in 2022, 11.8% were novel genre mixes and 88.2% stuck to an established genre. Published indie market research.

Best case: NEKOPARA Vol. 1 at ≈ 1.5M–2.5M copies, ≈ $4.2M–$11.4M after Steam's cut.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share Anime (2 of 4) and Hentai (2 of 4).
The winners: Winners here lead with Hentai + Anime, priced around $10.
When they shipped: The similar games span 2014 to 2022, and none of them shipped in the last two years.

How these numbers were worked out

A hit here: 1,000+ reviews, roughly $150k+ before Steam's cut (a standard indie benchmark).

Copies come from each game's reviews times a sales-per-review rate that falls with release age, from about 31 for the most recent game here to about 70 for the oldest, then widened into a range; revenue rides on that estimate times price. Source: GameDiscoverCo (2020) and VG Insights (2021).

Similar games

Game	Est. copies	Est. revenue	Price	Reviews	Tags
A Little to the Left 2022	Est. copies ≈ 478k–777k SteamSpy 200k–500k	Est. revenue $2.0M–$5.3M after Steam's cut $3.6M–$8.2M before Steam's cut	$14.99	19k reviews Very Positive	PuzzleRelaxing
NEKOPARA Vol. 0 2015	Est. copies ≈ 869k–1.4M SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $715k–$1.9M after Steam's cut $1.3M–$3.0M before Steam's cut	$2.99	18k reviews Very Positive	AnimeNudity
Cat Goes Fishing 2015	Est. copies ≈ 808k–1.3M SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $1.6M–$4.2M after Steam's cut $2.8M–$6.4M before Steam's cut	$6.99	17k reviews Very Positive	FishingCats
NEKOPARA Vol. 1 2014	Est. copies ≈ 1.5M–2.5M SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $4.2M–$11.4M after Steam's cut $7.7M–$17.5M before Steam's cut	$9.99	27k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	HentaiAnime