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How many copies did COVID: The Outbreak sell?

Estimated copies sold
≈ 2k–4k
$9k–$25k after Steam's cut $17k–$38k before the cut
from 97 reviews (Mostly Positive)

A labeled estimate from the public review count (adjusted for release year), not exact sales. Owner data cross-checked with SteamSpy.

Does this actually work?

We left COVID: The Outbreak out and predicted the genre from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including COVID: The Outbreak's, is estimated from Steam reviews, not self-reported sales.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 211k–553k
best case 7.3M (Total War: ROME II - Emperor Edition)
Games like COVID: The Outbreak

The middle of these games

≈ 211k–553k copies

≈ $2.4M–$4.0M after Steam's cut

from ~8k reviews

Only the top fifth of 2019’s Steam releases earned about $34k gross, so plan for that or less.

All 8 of your similar games are hits.

Best case: Total War: ROME II - Emperor Edition at ≈ 5.6M–9.1M copies, ≈ $46.0M–$123.6M after Steam's cut. A breakout hit, far above a typical game.

What it took to get here
About half the games that made it here had over 3k reviews in their first month; the spread ran 855 to 6k.
The genre you'd be entering
Your set
Your set clusters on Grand Strategy (5 of 8) and Simulation (5 of 8).
The winners
Winners here lead with Grand Strategy + Historical, priced around $30. The breakout hits carry Historical + Grand Strategy + Medieval; a typical game here doesn't.
The era
The games you compared span 2010 to 2024, and 1 of your 8 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 79 for the oldest, then widened into a range; revenue rides on that estimate times price. Source: GameDiscoverCo (2020) and VG Insights (2021).

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