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How many copies did The Colonists sell?

Estimated copies sold
≈ 38k–61k
$259k–$698k after Steam's cut $472k–$1.1M before Steam's cut
from 1k 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 The Colonists and predicted how it would do from its 8 similar games. Every figure here, including The Colonists's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 558k–1.1M
best case 1.4M (Timberborn)
Games like The Colonists

A typical game among these

≈ 558k–1.1M copies

≈ $5.4M–$13.9M after Steam's cut

from ~28k 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.

Best case: Timberborn at ≈ 1.0M–1.7M copies, ≈ $10.0M–$26.9M after Steam's cut.

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 1k to 38k.
The genre you'd be entering
These games
The similar games share City Builder (7 of 8) and Management (6 of 8).
The winners
Winners here lead with City Builder + Voxel, priced around $35.
When they shipped
5 of the 8 similar games shipped in the last two years. You'd be launching into a busy stretch.
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 of about 31, then widened into a range; revenue rides on that estimate times price. Source: GameDiscoverCo (2020) and VG Insights (2021).

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