How much revenue did SpaceEngine make?

$4.0M–$10.6M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did SpaceEngine sell?

Q: How many copies did SpaceEngine sell?

480k to 779k copies, based on its 17k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 480k–779k; $4.0M–$10.6M after Steam's cut $7.2M–$16.4M before Steam's cut; from 17k 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 SpaceEngine and predicted how it would do from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including SpaceEngine's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 7.5M–30.4M

best case 125.7M (PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS)

Games like SpaceEngine

A typical game among these

≈ 7.5M–30.4M copies

≈ $55.0M–$103.9M after Steam's cut

from ~345k 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 First-Person (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: PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS at ≈ 95.8M–155.7M copies.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share First-Person (4 of 8) and Open World (4 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with Survival + Shooter.
When they shipped: The similar games span 2015 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 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
VRChat 2017	Est. copies ≈ 9.3M–15.1M SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue Free	Free	269k reviews Mostly Positive	VRFree to Play
Wallpaper Engine 2018	Est. copies ≈ 31.0M–50.3M 3.0x 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
BeamNG.drive 2015	Est. copies ≈ 20.5M–33.4M SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue $141.2M–$379.6M after Steam's cut $256.7M–$584.0M before Steam's cut	$24.99	421k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	SimulationDriving
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
Factorio 2020	Est. copies ≈ 5.9M–9.5M SteamSpy 5M–10M	Est. revenue $56.4M–$151.5M after Steam's cut $102.5M–$233.1M before Steam's cut	$35.00	236k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	AutomationBase-Building
Unturned 2017	Est. copies ≈ 19.4M–31.6M 1.6x vs typical SteamSpy 50M–100M	Est. revenue Free	Free	565k reviews Very Positive	Free to PlaySurvival
PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS 2017	Est. copies ≈ 95.8M–155.7M 8.1x vs typical SteamSpy 100M–200M	Est. revenue Free	Free	2.8M reviews Mixed	SurvivalShooter
Teardown 2022	Est. copies ≈ 3.4M–5.5M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $27.9M–$75.0M after Steam's cut $50.7M–$115.4M before Steam's cut	$29.99	136k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	DestructionPhysics