Steam still takes the lion’s share of PC game sales through commissions, publishing fees, and every checkout on its storefront, and 2026 has already turned that cut into a $15 billion pile. Forza Horizon 6 is sitting at the top of the new-release chart with $210.5 million, proof that a sequel with a built-in audience can still outrun almost everything else on the platform. The rest of the leaderboard is a mix of tentpole sequels and sudden indie hits rather than a single kind of game.
According to the head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, Rhys Elliot, Steam has made $15 billion in 2026, and a packed run of high-profile launches still ahead is likely to push that figure higher before December. Elliot’s estimate is gross storefront revenue, a number large enough to buy Valve co-founder Gabe Newell a few more superyachts and already big enough that the last third of the year looks like another sprint.
Elliot noted that the top 100 new games by gross revenue make up 15.9% of Steam’s total 2026 revenue so far, a slice worth around $2.4 billion. Crimson Desert is the title doing the most work inside that group, turning a brand-new universe into a $203.3 million earner that can stand next to long-running franchises.
Resident Evil Requiem followed with just over $200.9 million, Slay the Spire 2 cleared more than $148 million, Subnautica 2 brought in $139.2 million, and Meccha Chameleon added $89.8 million. Those six games, two of them new intellectual properties, have generated a little under $1 billion combined, which still accounts for only 6.6 percent of Steam’s year-to-date take.
The split between fresh brands and familiar ones is more lopsided than the raw title count suggests, and Elliot observed, “Of the new-game top 100, 63% were actually new IP, but 52.5% of the revenue ($1.25B) came from established IP.” He added, “But it’s worth noting Crimson Desert, with its $203M, accounts for about 18% of all new-IP revenue in the top 100. When we take Crimson out of the analysis, the 62 new-IP games make up only about 39%. So yeah, a lot of established IP is doing the legwork, as you’d expect.”
That math shows why the store can look packed with new names while the money still clusters around sequels and series that already own a wishlist. Forza Horizon 6, Resident Evil Requiem, Slay the Spire 2, and Subnautica 2 are all riding existing audiences, and even Meccha Chameleon sits beside that franchise gravity rather than replacing it.
The remaining months of 2026 will test whether another wave of launches can widen that new-release slice without waiting on a single outlier. Silent Hill: Townfall and Control Resonant are due later this month, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, and Planet Zoo 2 follow in October, and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV is slated for December.
The late-year pipeline gets thicker once the tentpoles land, and Steam’s ledger is set to swell again when Phantom Blade Zero, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and Gears of War: E-Day start converting wishlists into checkouts. Valve still takes a cut of whatever moves on the platform, including the microtransactions and downloadable content that now travel with most big releases, so the next climb toward a first-ever year above $20 billion will be built as much on live-service extras as on launch-week sticker prices.
