How much revenue did The Messenger make?

$2.2M–$6.0M after Steam's roughly 30% cut, derived from the copies estimate and its price.

How many copies did The Messenger sell?

Q: How many copies did The Messenger sell?

404k to 656k copies, based on its 13k Steam reviews. This is a labeled estimate from the review count, not exact sales.

Estimated copies sold: ≈ 404k–656k; $2.2M–$6.0M after Steam's cut $4.0M–$9.2M 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 The Messenger and predicted how it would do from its 3 similar games. Every figure here, including The Messenger's, is estimated from Steam reviews.

Copies, estimated from reviews

typical (middle half) 3.1M–4.6M

best case 5.9M (Celeste)

Games like The Messenger

A typical game among these

≈ 3.1M–4.6M copies

≈ $17.8M–$32.4M after Steam's cut

from ~76k 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 3 of the similar games are hits.

This comes from a small set of games, so take it as a sketch.

Best case: Celeste at ≈ 4.5M–7.4M copies, ≈ $24.9M–$67.0M after Steam's cut.

The genre you'd be entering

These games: The similar games share 2D Platformer (3 of 3) and Platformer (3 of 3).
The winners: Winners here lead with Precision Platformer + Platformer, priced around $20.
When they shipped: The similar games span 2010 to 2019, 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 36 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
Celeste 2018	Est. copies ≈ 4.5M–7.4M 2.0x vs typical SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $24.9M–$67.0M after Steam's cut $45.3M–$103.1M before Steam's cut	$19.99	149k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Precision PlatformerDifficult
Super Meat Boy 2010	Est. copies ≈ 2.5M–4.0M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $10.2M–$27.5M after Steam's cut $18.6M–$42.3M before Steam's cut	$14.99	39k reviews Very Positive	Precision Platformer Platformer
Katana ZERO 2019	Est. copies ≈ 2.2M–3.6M SteamSpy 2M–5M	Est. revenue $9.0M–$24.3M after Steam's cut $16.4M–$37.4M before Steam's cut	$14.99	76k reviews Overwhelmingly Positive	Pixel GraphicsAction