The top-selling PlayStation games on Steam
PlayStation has made over $1.2B so far from selling games on Steam. But which PS Studios games are selling best on Steam? And is the novelty wearing off for PC gamers?
We asked our audience (that’s you!🖤) about the Alinea estimates you wanted to see most. The clear winner was ‘’PS5 games on Steam.’’ We’ve got you.
Our estimates show that PlayStation Studios-published games on Steam have generated gross revenues of $1.5B+.
Valve takes a 30% cut of game purchases on Steam, shrinking to 25% after the first $10M in sales and 20% after $50M. With this in mind, I calculated the revenue cuts for Valve and Sony for every PS Studios game on Steam based on our estimates.
Sony took almost $1.2B overall, while Valve took $350M+.
Let’s (Hell)dive into the copies sold estimates.
The top PlayStation Studios titles on Steam by copies sold
PlayStation-published games have sold 43M copies overall on Steam. Here’s the top 5:
Helldivers 2 is Sony‘s largest PC success by a massive margin, generating $400M in gross revenue and selling 12.7M copies. Helldivers delivered an accessible, deeply replayable co-op experience at a quiet release moment for the market. A fifth of Helldivers 2’s Steam audience has played for over 100 hours, and 200K people play on Steam every day. This kept Helldivers 2 at the top of the global Steam charts, driving unprecedented sales and PlayStation’s first true PC megahit. It sold over double as many copies on Steam as it did on PS5. (PC) gamers love co-op, and Sony will keep this in mind on the hunt for its next live-service success.
Horizon Zero Dawn sold 4.5M copies on Steam – that’s gross revenue of $170M. Horizon was Sony’s first major exclusive to hit Steam (in Aug 2020), creating crazy novelty value and unleashing pent-up demand. Continued franchise visibility and frequent discounts helped it maintain long-term momentum, turning it into one of PlayStation’s most evergreen Steam performers. However, Horizon’s sequel, Forbidden West, is selling 3x slower than Zero Dawn after 608 days on Steam, suggesting the PS-to-Steam novelty is wearing off (more on that later).
There’s a clear novelty factor of having PS games on Steam. Want to see this data in our platform for yourself? Get a free trial God of War has made almost $150M (‘‘BOY!’’) in revenue via 4.2M copies sold on Steam, driven by its reputation as one of PlayStation’s best narrative action games (it won game of the year at The Game Awards in 2018). Its technical execution helped build trust among PC players after mixed early ports. Continued franchise relevance, culminating in Ragnarök’s PC release, and discounts have sustained interest and given God of War recurring sales spikes during those promo windows.
Days Gone surprised on PC with $108M and 3.4M copies sold, far outperforming its console perception and becoming one of PlayStation’s most quietly successful PC releases. Days Gone’s Steam port launched in May 2021, when PlayStation games on Steam were still a novelty. PC players responded positively to Days Gone’s systemic gameplay – open-world survival, crafting, and horde mechanics – which aligned well with audience preferences on Steam. Steady discounting and strong user reviews helped give this one a longer-than-expected tail.
Spider-Man Remastered generated $116M and sold 2.7M copies on Steam, supported by the enormous mainstream strength of the Spider-Man IP and the game’s premium presentation. The PC version’s high-end technical features – ultrawide support, ray tracing, and strong performance – helped it appeal to hardware enthusiasts, boosting day-one sales. However, there were some performance growing pains at launch. The recognisability and popularity of the franchise have helped drive steady sales momentum over time:
Is the novelty of PlayStation games on Steam wearing off?
The early PlayStation releases on Steam felt special. They really felt like events. This novelty helped Horizon, Days Gone, and God of War perform extremely well on PC. There was clear pent-up demand.
That novelty is wearing off.
All of Sony’s major franchises have already landed on PC. The audience that was once excited to experience these games for the first time has largely been served. Later releases naturally face smaller potential audiences, and our estimates clearly show this.
We launch-aligned our Steam estimates for God of War and its sequel, God of War Ragnarok. We found that God of War sold 2.5M copies after 427 days on Steam, over 2.5x more copies than Ragnarök sold in the same timeframe. Also, 13% of God of War’s Steam players also played Ragnarök on Steam.
We see the same trend for Spider-Man. After 294 days on Steam, Marvel’s Spider-Man had sold 1.4M copies, over twice as many as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 in the same time frame. A little under 12% of Spidey 1 players on Steam also played Spidey 2.
While the novelty of PlayStation games on Steam – it seems – is wearing off, this doesn’t mean PlayStation is struggling on PC. Spider-Man 2’s port still generated revenues of $32M million on Steam, while Ragnarök has generated $45M.
The nature of demand has changed. When a game aligns with Steam player preferences, as Helldivers 2 did with its PvE awesomeness, it can still become a massive hit. Just look at those numbers:
PlayStation has been steadily reducing the gap between PS5 launches and Steam ports, a logical way to raise overall revenue without disrupting its console business too much. Live-service games will typically be simultaneous launches across PlayStation and Steam.
A six to twelve-month window would allow PlayStation to capture peak console demand while still capitalising on the strong appetite for premium single-player games on PC.
The challenge is finding the right interval that protects PS5 software sales while still satisfying a PC audience that increasingly expects timely releases.
The imminent arrival of the Steam Machine complicates this balance. Until now, PlayStation has treated Steam as a secondary channel, with longer delays for single-player first-party titles.
If Steam begins to function as a competing ecosystem with its own dedicated hardware that plays PlayStation titles, the relationship changes.
PlayStation may soon face pressure to rethink its timing and release strategy as Steam evolves from a distribution platform into a rival platform with broader reach and fewer constraints.
Will PlayStation rage against the Steam Machine? We’ll have to wait and see.
And that’s the end of our first audience-requested analysis!
Before we finish, here’s the second-most requested estimate we got: we estimate that Bloodborne has sold over 9M copies on PlayStation.
Bloodborne shifted another 400K+ in the six months after Elden Ring launched. PC port when?
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[Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
Unfortunate to say that most of the catalogue would perform exceptionally better if also put on steam
I think they sell better on steam because install base is larger and the issue with the sequels of horizon Spider-Man and God of war is that they are too similar to the first games so the fix people get from playing the first game satisfies them enough that they don't need to purchase the second I think this isn't considered