How much revenue did Half-Life 2 make?

$48.6M–$130.7M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did Half-Life 2 sell?

Q: How many copies did Half-Life 2 sell?

17.7M to 28.8M copies, based on its 280k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 17.7M–28.8M; $48.6M–$130.7M after Steam's cut $88.4M–$201.1M before Steam's cut; from 280k reviews (Overwhelmingly 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 Half-Life 2 and predicted how it would do from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Half-Life 2's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 22.6M–35.8M

best case 34.9M (Apex Legends™)

Games like Half-Life 2

A typical game among these

≈ 22.6M–35.8M copies

≈ $149.6M–$212.5M after Steam's cut

from ~565k 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 8 of the similar games are hits.

No genre covers most of these similar games. The closest is FPS (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: Apex Legends™ at ≈ 26.6M–43.2M copies.

What their first month looked like

About half the games that made it here had over 76k reviews in their first month; the range was 40k to 326k.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share FPS (4 of 8) and Open World (4 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with Battle Royale + FPS.
When they shipped: The similar games span 2011 to 2020, 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
Subnautica 2018	Est. copies ≈ 11.6M–18.8M SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue $95.5M–$256.7M after Steam's cut $173.6M–$395.0M before Steam's cut	$29.99	381k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Open World Survival CraftSurvival
Destiny 2 2019	Est. copies ≈ 19.1M–31.0M SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue Free	Free	663k reviews Mostly Positive	Free to PlayOpen World
Warframe 2013	Est. copies ≈ 42.9M–69.7M SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue Free	Free	678k reviews Very Positive	Free to PlayAction RPG
Cyberpunk 2077 2020	Est. copies ≈ 24.4M–39.6M 1.7x vs typical SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue $402.0M–$1080.8M after Steam's cut $730.9M–$1662.7M before Steam's cut	$59.99	983k reviews Very Positive	CyberpunkOpen World
Deep Rock Galactic 2020	Est. copies ≈ 9.4M–15.3M SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue $77.8M–$209.2M after Steam's cut $141.5M–$321.9M before Steam's cut	$29.99	380k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	DwarfCo-op
Portal 2 2011	Est. copies ≈ 29.5M–48.0M SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue $81.1M–$218.1M after Steam's cut $147.5M–$335.6M before Steam's cut	$9.99	467k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Platformer Puzzle
Fallout 4 2015	Est. copies ≈ 21.0M–34.1M SteamSpy 10M–20M	Est. revenue $115.2M–$309.7M after Steam's cut $209.4M–$476.5M before Steam's cut	$19.99	429k reviews Very Positive	Open WorldPost-apocalyptic
Apex Legends™ 2020	Est. copies ≈ 26.6M–43.2M 1.9x vs typical SteamSpy 100M–200M	Est. revenue Free	Free	1.1M reviews Mixed	Free to PlayBattle Royale