How much revenue did Transistor make?

$9.6M–$25.9M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did Transistor sell?

Q: How many copies did Transistor sell?

1.8M to 2.8M copies, based on its 31k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 1.8M–2.8M; $9.6M–$25.9M after Steam's cut $17.5M–$39.8M before Steam's cut; from 31k 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 Transistor and predicted how it would do from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Transistor's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 5.9M–9.3M

best case 57.1M (Stardew Valley)

Games like Transistor

A typical game among these

≈ 5.9M–9.3M copies

≈ $35.8M–$81.7M after Steam's cut

from ~158k 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 Female Protagonist (3 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: Stardew Valley at ≈ 43.5M–70.7M copies, ≈ $179.4M–$482.4M after Steam's cut. It is a breakout hit, far above a typical game.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share Female Protagonist (3 of 8) and Anime (2 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with Open World Survival Craft + Survival, priced around $15.
When they shipped: None of the similar games shipped in the last two years; the newest is from 2019. 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 36 for the most recent game here to about 61 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
The Forest 2018	Est. copies ≈ 20.8M–33.7M 4.3x vs typical SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue $114.2M–$306.9M after Steam's cut $207.5M–$472.2M before Steam's cut	$19.99	683k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Open World Survival CraftSurvival
Stardew Valley 2016	Est. copies ≈ 43.5M–70.7M 6.6x vs typical SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue $179.4M–$482.4M after Steam's cut $326.2M–$742.1M before Steam's cut	$14.99	1.0M reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Farming SimPixel Graphics
Wallpaper Engine 2018	Est. copies ≈ 31.0M–50.3M 6.5x vs typical SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue $42.5M–$114.3M after Steam's cut $77.3M–$175.9M before Steam's cut	$4.99	1.0M reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	MatureUtilities
Life is Strange - Episode 1 2015	Est. copies ≈ 8.6M–14.0M SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue Free	Free	176k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Story RichChoices Matter
Muse Dash 2019	Est. copies ≈ 3.5M–5.7M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $2.9M–$7.8M after Steam's cut $5.3M–$12.0M before Steam's cut	$2.99	122k reviews Very Positive	MusicRhythm
Slime Rancher 2017	Est. copies ≈ 5.4M–8.8M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $29.8M–$80.2M after Steam's cut $54.2M–$123.4M before Steam's cut	$19.99	158k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	CuteExploration
Celeste 2018	Est. copies ≈ 4.5M–7.4M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $24.9M–$67.0M after Steam's cut $45.3M–$103.1M before Steam's cut	$19.99	149k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Precision PlatformerDifficult
Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition 2017	Est. copies ≈ 7.1M–11.5M SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue $87.8M–$236.1M after Steam's cut $159.6M–$363.2M before Steam's cut	$44.99	206k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Tactical RPGRPG