How much revenue did The Witness make?

$9.9M–$26.6M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did The Witness sell?

Q: How many copies did The Witness sell?

900k to 1.5M copies, based on its 22k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 900k–1.5M; $9.9M–$26.6M after Steam's cut $18.0M–$40.9M before Steam's cut; from 22k 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 The Witness and predicted how it would do from its 4 similar games. Every figure here, including The Witness's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 2.8M–3.4M

best case 3.5M (Outer Wilds)

Games like The Witness

A typical game among these

≈ 2.8M–3.4M copies

≈ $20.0M–$35.4M after Steam's cut

from ~50k 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.

Best case: Outer Wilds at ≈ 2.7M–4.4M copies, ≈ $18.5M–$49.7M after Steam's cut.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share Exploration (3 of 4) and Horror (2 of 4).
The winners: Winners here lead with Exploration + Space, priced around $25.
When they shipped: The similar games span 2009 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 79 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
Mirror's Edge™ 2009	Est. copies ≈ 2.5M–4.0M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $13.7M–$36.8M after Steam's cut $24.9M–$56.6M before Steam's cut	$19.99	39k reviews Very Positive	Action-AdventureParkour
Inside the Backrooms 2022	Est. copies ≈ 1.2M–1.9M SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue $2.2M–$6.0M after Steam's cut $4.1M–$9.2M before Steam's cut	$6.99	47k reviews Mostly Positive	HorrorMultiplayer
SOMA 2015	Est. copies ≈ 2.6M–4.2M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $21.4M–$57.4M after Steam's cut $38.8M–$88.3M before Steam's cut	$29.99	53k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Horror Psychological Horror
Outer Wilds 2020	Est. copies ≈ 2.7M–4.4M 2.2x vs typical SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue $18.5M–$49.7M after Steam's cut $33.6M–$76.4M before Steam's cut	$24.99	108k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	ExplorationSpace