How much revenue did Balatro make?

$20.5M–$55.0M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did Balatro sell?

Q: How many copies did Balatro sell?

5.0M to 8.1M copies, based on its 200k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 5.0M–8.1M; $20.5M–$55.0M after Steam's cut $37.2M–$84.7M before Steam's cut; from 200k 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 Balatro and predicted how it would do from its 4 similar games. Every figure here, including Balatro's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 313k–2.6M

best case 8.3M (Slay the Spire)

Games like Balatro

A typical game among these

≈ 313k–2.6M copies

≈ $1.3M–$25.5M after Steam's cut

from ~17k 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: Slay the Spire at ≈ 6.3M–10.3M copies, ≈ $43.5M–$116.9M after Steam's cut.

What their first month looked like

About half the games that made it here had over 6k reviews in their first month; the range was 1k to 7k.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share Deckbuilding (4 of 4) and Rogue-like (4 of 4).
The winners: Winners here lead with Roguelike Deckbuilder + Card Game, priced around $25.
When they shipped: Only 1 of the 4 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 that falls with release age, from about 31 for the most recent game here to about 36 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
Slay the Spire 2019	Est. copies ≈ 6.3M–10.3M 13x vs typical SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue $43.5M–$116.9M after Steam's cut $79.0M–$179.8M before Steam's cut	$24.99	220k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Roguelike DeckbuilderCard Game
Monster Train 2020	Est. copies ≈ 570k–927k SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $3.9M–$10.5M after Steam's cut $7.1M–$16.2M before Steam's cut	$24.99	23k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Card BattlerRogue-lite
Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers 2024	Est. copies ≈ 91k–148k SteamSpy 100k–200k	Est. revenue $376k–$1.0M after Steam's cut $683k–$1.6M before Steam's cut	$14.99	4k reviews Very Positive	Roguelike DeckbuilderStrategy
Luck be a Landlord 2023	Est. copies ≈ 287k–467k SteamSpy 200k–500k	Est. revenue $789k–$2.1M after Steam's cut $1.4M–$3.3M before Steam's cut	$9.99	12k reviews Very Positive	Roguelike Deckbuilder Deckbuilding