How much revenue did Shelter make?

$968k–$2.6M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did Shelter sell?

Q: How many copies did Shelter sell?

235k to 382k copies, based on its 4k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 235k–382k; $968k–$2.6M after Steam's cut $1.8M–$4.0M before Steam's cut; from 4k 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 Shelter and predicted how it would do from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Shelter's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 1.5M–4.1M

best case 9.2M (theHunter: Call of the Wild™)

Games like Shelter

A typical game among these

≈ 1.5M–4.1M copies

≈ $9.9M–$66.6M after Steam's cut

from ~57k 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 Exploration (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: theHunter: Call of the Wild™ at ≈ 7.0M–11.4M copies.

What their first month looked like

About half the games that made it here had over 16k reviews in their first month; the range was 9k to 21k.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share Exploration (3 of 8) and Open World (3 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with Hunting + Open World.
When they shipped: The similar games span 2014 to 2021, 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 70 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 Cry® 5 2018	Est. copies ≈ 5.8M–9.4M 3.3x vs typical SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $95.1M–$255.6M after Steam's cut $172.9M–$393.3M before Steam's cut	$59.99	190k reviews Very Positive	Open WorldAction-Adventure
The Plan 2014	Est. copies ≈ 1.3M–2.2M SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue Free	Free	24k reviews Very Positive	Free to PlayIndie
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition 2021	Est. copies ≈ 1.1M–1.8M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $6.1M–$16.3M after Steam's cut $11.0M–$25.1M before Steam's cut	$19.99	44k reviews Very Positive	SingleplayerAction RPG
Russian Fishing 4 2021	Est. copies ≈ 2.3M–3.7M 1.6x vs typical SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue Free	Free	91k reviews Mixed	FishingMultiplayer
We Were Here 2017	Est. copies ≈ 1.1M–1.9M SteamSpy 1M–2M	Est. revenue Free	Free	33k reviews Very Positive	Free to PlayCo-op
theHunter: Call of the Wild™ 2017	Est. copies ≈ 7.0M–11.4M 3.6x vs typical SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue Free	Free	203k reviews Very Positive	HuntingOpen World
ICARUS 2021	Est. copies ≈ 1.7M–2.8M SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $16.4M–$44.2M after Steam's cut $29.9M–$68.0M before Steam's cut	$34.99	69k reviews Mostly Positive	SurvivalOpen World Survival Craft
FAR: Lone Sails 2018	Est. copies ≈ 806k–1.3M SteamSpy 500k–1M	Est. revenue $3.3M–$8.9M after Steam's cut $6.0M–$13.7M before Steam's cut	$14.99	27k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	AtmosphericAdventure