Valve appears to be having the time of its life. According to new data, the company is generating more money through Steam than ever before. Meanwhile, the rest of the industry seems to be trying to set fire to everything.

The data comes from Alinea Analytics, so as always, the figures should not be treated as 100% accurate. However, the firm has a strong track record when it comes to estimating sales and revenue.

Valve’s platform managed to rake in an estimated $11.1 billion in gross game revenue during the first six months of 2026, representing a 14.5% rise year-on-year. Apparently, that was even 8% better than the second half of 2025, which is pretty remarkable when you consider that the end of the year includes the holiday season and its numerous sales.

Since the first half of the year ended, Steam has reportedly banked another half-billion dollars, taking its estimated 2026 total to $11.6 billion.

According to Alinea, one of the biggest drivers behind Steam’s continued success is the massive surge in Asian players, particularly those from China. Other factors include higher prices for new releases, viral co-op games, publishers making better use of their back catalogues and companies sheepishly returning to Steam after attempting to push customers towards their own launchers.

Let’s put Steam’s growth into perspective, shall we? In 2017, Steam generated an estimated $5.5 billion across the entire year. By 2025, that had climbed to roughly $20 billion.

And that’s without Half-Life 3. But at least they gave us a tiny computer that costs a small fortune.

According to Alinea’s estimates, just 21% of Steam’s revenue during the first half of 2026 came from games released this year. That is down from the first half of 2025, when 27% of revenue came from games released during that calendar year. In the first half of 2024, the figure was 29%.

In other words, the remaining 79% came from titles released in 2025 or earlier.

Part of that can be attributed to Steam’s ever-growing collection of excellent games, many of which can frequently be purchased at equally excellent prices during its endless procession of sales. However, a significant chunk of this back-catalogue revenue undoubtedly comes from the usual long-running heavy hitters, including games such as Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, PUBG, Apex Legends, Rust, Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto V.

Alinea does not provide a breakdown of exactly which older games are bringing in the most money, though, so those examples should be treated as reasonable suspects rather than confirmed culprits.

This is not a new problem for the industry. New releases face the increasingly difficult challenge of convincing people to abandon long-running, established games such as Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto Online, League of Legends and the latest incarnation of Call of Duty.

Newzoo previously found that games at least six years old accounted for more than 60% of PC and console playtime during 2023. Just five games — Fortnite, Roblox, League of Legends, Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V — reportedly accounted for 27% of all playtime by themselves.

That pattern has not changed much, either. As I covered earlier this year, the five most-played games on PlayStation during 2025 were Fortnite, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto V, Roblox and Minecraft — exactly the same top five as 2024.

People’s gaming time is increasingly dominated by these enormous, constantly updated games. Meanwhile, other data indicates that 63% of players buy two or fewer new games each year, including roughly a third who purchase less than one new game annually.

That leaves new releases competing not only against every other game launching around the same time, but against decades of proven classics, heavily discounted blockbusters and live-service games into which players have already poured hundreds or even thousands of hours.

But anyway, which new games have been most successful on Steam this year?

According to Alinea, sitting at the head of the grid is Forza Horizon 6, which has generated an estimated $197.7 million through Steam since launching less than two months ago. Around $4 million of that apparently came from DLC, including almost $2 million from the VIP Membership.

Alinea estimates that the game has sold 3.5 million copies on Steam and is generating revenue three times faster than Forza Horizon 5 did at the equivalent point in its life.

That feels darkly funny considering Xbox is currently undergoing a massive reset because its business is “not healthy”.

Still, Forza Horizon 6 has consistently been a rare bright spot for the company. Earlier estimates suggested it was already nearing five million sales across every platform within its first week, and I also thought it was the best game in the series so far, even if it was a very safe sequel.

Just behind it is Resident Evil Requiem, which has generated an estimated $194.5 million and sold around 3.4 million copies on Steam. That includes approximately $1.3 million from the purely cosmetic Deluxe Kit.

Interestingly, Alinea estimates that only 8.9% of the people who wishlisted the game before launch have bought it so far. That sounds low, but Resident Evil games tend to enjoy long sales tails, helped by regular discounts and Capcom’s increasingly effective habit of turning its back catalogue into a money-printing machine.

In third place is Crimson Desert, sitting just above $190 million since launching in March. That is particularly impressive because it is the only completely new IP among the top three, although Alinea notes that its monthly revenue is beginning to slow as the initial wave of full-price sales dries up.

Slay the Spire 2 comes next with an estimated $141.7 million, but it is the clear winner when it comes to sheer volume. The early-access sequel has reportedly sold 7.1 million copies in just four months, more than Forza Horizon 6 and Resident Evil Requiem combined.

Its lower $25 price means it cannot compete with those games in total revenue, but selling more than seven million copies while still in early access is frankly ridiculous.

Subnautica 2 follows with an estimated $133.6 million, the majority of which was generated during its early-access launch month in May.

Finally, there is Meccha Chameleon, which has generated an estimated $71.3 million despite costing only around $6.

That makes it comfortably the smallest game in the group in terms of price and development team, but Alinea says it is also the best-selling new Steam release of 2026 by copies sold. It’s also said to be 2026’s best-selling game in terms of copies sold, too.