How much revenue did stardust make?

$409–$1k after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did stardust sell?

Q: How many copies did stardust sell?

298 to 484 copies, based on its 12 Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 298–484; $409–$1k after Steam's cut $744–$2k before Steam's cut; from 12 reviews (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 stardust and predicted how it would do from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including stardust's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 2k–55k

best case 104k (Arise: A Simple Story)

Games like stardust

A typical game among these

≈ 2k–55k copies

≈ $17k–$467k after Steam's cut

from ~255 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.

No genre covers most of these similar games. The closest is Emotional (4 of 8), 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: Arise: A Simple Story at ≈ 80k–129k copies, ≈ $437k–$1.2M after Steam's cut.

What their first month looked like

About half the games that made it here had over 115 reviews in their first month; the range was 8 to 536.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share Emotional (4 of 8) and Philosophical (3 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with Emotional + 3D Platformer, priced around $20.
When they shipped: None of the similar games shipped in the last two years; the newest is from 2022. 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 that falls with release age, from about 31 for the most recent game here to about 43 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
Far from Noise 2017	Est. copies ≈ 7k–11k SteamSpy under 20k	Est. revenue $15k–$41k after Steam's cut $28k–$63k before Steam's cut	$7.99	202 reviews Very Positive	ConversationNarrative
Arise: A Simple Story 2020	Est. copies ≈ 80k–129k 13x vs typical SteamSpy 200k–500k	Est. revenue $437k–$1.2M after Steam's cut $795k–$1.8M before Steam's cut	$19.99	3k reviews Very Positive	Emotional3D Platformer
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 2019	Est. copies ≈ 2k–3k SteamSpy under 20k	Est. revenue Free	Free	59 reviews Very Positive	IndieShort
Summer in Mara 2020	Est. copies ≈ 55k–89k 8.6x vs typical SteamSpy 200k–500k	Est. revenue $300k–$808k after Steam's cut $546k–$1.2M before Steam's cut	$19.99	2k reviews Mostly Positive	Life SimRelaxing
Ticket 2017	Est. copies ≈ 2k–3k SteamSpy under 20k	Est. revenue $3k–$8k after Steam's cut $6k–$13k before Steam's cut	$6.00	55 reviews Very Positive	PsychedelicEmotional
Mundaun 2021	Est. copies ≈ 38k–61k 5.9x vs typical SteamSpy under 20k	Est. revenue $206k–$555k after Steam's cut $375k–$854k before Steam's cut	$19.99	2k reviews Very Positive	Walking SimulatorHand-drawn
Leaf on Wind 2021	Est. copies ≈ 471–766 SteamSpy under 20k	Est. revenue $258–$694 after Steam's cut $469–$1k before Steam's cut	$1.99	19 reviews Mostly Positive	AtmosphericColorful
Sephonie 2022	Est. copies ≈ 8k–12k SteamSpy under 20k	Est. revenue $42k–$113k after Steam's cut $76k–$174k before Steam's cut	$19.99	308 reviews Very Positive	3D PlatformerAtmospheric