How much revenue did Natural Selection 2 make?

$1.2M–$3.1M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did Natural Selection 2 sell?

Q: How many copies did Natural Selection 2 sell?

845k to 1.4M copies, based on its 13k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 845k–1.4M; $1.2M–$3.1M after Steam's cut $2.1M–$4.8M before Steam's cut; from 13k 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 Natural Selection 2 and predicted how it would do from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including Natural Selection 2's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 32.3M–106.2M

best case 820.1M (Counter-Strike 2)

Games like Natural Selection 2

A typical game among these

≈ 32.3M–106.2M copies

≈ $136.0M–$218.9M after Steam's cut

from ~731k 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: Counter-Strike 2 at ≈ 624.8M–1015.3M copies.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share FPS (4 of 8) and Shooter (3 of 8).
The winners: Winners here lead with FPS + Shooter.
When they shipped: The similar games span 2011 to 2024, and 1 of the 8 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
Counter-Strike 2 2012	Est. copies ≈ 624.8M–1015.3M 14x vs typical SteamSpy 100M–200M	Est. revenue Free	Free	9.9M reviews Very Positive	FPSShooter
War Thunder 2013	Est. copies ≈ 49.7M–80.7M SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue Free	Free	786k reviews Mostly Positive	Free to PlaySimulation
PAYDAY 2 2013	Est. copies ≈ 42.7M–69.3M SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue $117.2M–$315.1M after Steam's cut $213.1M–$484.7M before Steam's cut	$9.99	675k reviews Very Positive	Co-opAction
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
Raft 2022	Est. copies ≈ 9.4M–15.3M SteamSpy 10M–20M	Est. revenue $51.7M–$139.0M after Steam's cut $94.0M–$213.8M before Steam's cut	$19.99	379k reviews Very Positive	SurvivalMultiplayer
PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS 2017	Est. copies ≈ 95.8M–155.7M 3.8x vs typical SteamSpy 100M–200M	Est. revenue Free	Free	2.8M reviews Mixed	SurvivalShooter
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege 2015	Est. copies ≈ 76.0M–123.4M 2.1x vs typical SteamSpy 20M–50M	Est. revenue Free	Free	1.6M reviews Very Positive	FPSPvP
7 Days to Die 2024	Est. copies ≈ 9.9M–16.2M SteamSpy 10M–20M	Est. revenue $123.1M–$331.0M after Steam's cut $223.8M–$509.2M before Steam's cut	$44.99	401k reviews Very Positive	SurvivalZombies