How much revenue did Defend the Rook make?

$30k–$80k after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did Defend the Rook sell?

Q: How many copies did Defend the Rook sell?

6k to 10k copies, based on its 244 Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 6k–10k; $30k–$80k after Steam's cut $54k–$124k before Steam's cut; from 244 reviews (Mostly 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 Defend the Rook and predicted how it would do from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Defend the Rook's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 447–56k

best case 448k (The Last Spell)

Games like Defend the Rook

A typical game among these

≈ 447–56k copies

≈ $2k–$364k after Steam's cut

from ~23 reviews

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

3 of the 8 similar games are hits.

Best case: The Last Spell at ≈ 341k–555k copies, ≈ $2.3M–$6.3M after Steam's cut.

What their first month looked like

About half the games that made it here had over 18 reviews in their first month; the range was 3 to 8k.

Games with under about 100 reviews in month one almost never recover.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share Rogue-lite (6 of 8) and Tower Defense (6 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with Turn-Based Strategy + Turn-Based Tactics, priced around $25.
When they shipped: Only 3 of the 8 similar games shipped in the last two years. That says more about which games were found than about the market.

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 of about 31, then widened into a range; revenue rides on that estimate times price. Source: GameDiscoverCo (2020) and VG Insights (2021).

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