Valve’s PC storefront Steam continues to go from strength to strength. In the first half of 2026, it recorded its highest-ever results, generating an enormous $11.1bn in revenue, which is more than it made during the game-heavy end of last year, and considerably more than it made during the first half of 2025
That’s according to estimates by number cruncher Alinea Analytics, and Rhys Elliott, the head of market analysis there, reckons there are myriad reasons why Steam’s doing so well. The prevalence of the Chinese market, higher prices on new releases, and third-party publishers returning to the storefront after dropping their own game-launchers are all viable reasons for Valve’s continued growth. That first part is especially notable; the Chinese market is massive, and as far back as February 2025 50 percent of all Steam accounts belonged to Chinese-speaking users.
“Zoom out over the last decade and things get really crazy,” noted Elliott on Alinea’s website. “There’s obviously a visible dip as the market normalised after the pandemic sugar-high, but the long arc is relentlessly up, with seven half-years of growth.” You can see this graphic below. It shows clearly that over the past decade, Steam has nearly quintupled its revenue, with the first half of 2026 bringing in nearly five times as much money for Valve than the same period in 2017
The biggest games of the year so far on Steam have been Forza Horizon 6, raking in $197.7m in under two months; Resident Evil Requiem, managing $194.5m since its launch in February, netting 3.4m sales on Steam alone (and, interestingly, $1.3m of that has been from the cosmetics pack alone – maybe Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is onto something after all); and Crimson Desert, pulling in $190m since its March launch – not a bad kick-off for a brand new franchise. Then, interestingly, there’s a block of three indies making money for Steam, with Slay the Spire 2, Subnautica 2 and Meccha Chameleon earning $141.7m, $133.6m, and $71.3m respectively.
As Steam surges on the back of the robust PC market, PlayStation and Xbox are facing more difficult times. Microsoft’s gaming revenue is down seven percent year-on-year, and after this week’s ‘reset’, it’s unlikely the ship will right itself fully anytime soon. PlayStation isn’t faring much better: the platform holder has been selling fewer and fewer copies of its PlayStation exclusives since 2020, and it just sliced off a large chunk of its potential revenue stream by announcing it will not bring future exclusives to PC. Both companies are feeling the bite of increased hardware costs thanks to the AI-fuelled RAM crisis.
On top of that, consumer sentiment towards both companies has tanked in the wake of Sony’s announcement it will cease production of game discs in 2028. And on the green side of the fence, Microsoft is the villain as the brutal impact of its layoffs starts to become clear. It’s been a miserable week for consumers and professionals in the games industry, but – hey – at least Steam appears to be having a good time
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