Steam hits a record $1.7 billion in September despite soaring PC hardware costs

[Riddler]

Steam had record estimated revenue of 1.7 billion dollars in September, up 13 percent on September 2025, according to figures reported by Tom's Hardware. Third quarter revenue reached 5.5 billion dollars, up 12 percent year on year. For the first nine months of 2026, revenue is estimated at 16.5 billion dollars, compared with 14.5 billion a year earlier. At that pace, Steam could pass 20 billion dollars in a single year for the first time

The volume of games is staggering. As of 1 October, 20,220 games had been released on Steam in 2026, with another 1,156 scheduled for October, putting the year on track for around 21,000 releases. That is more than 50 new games every day. Discoverability, already a problem for small developers, is only getting harder

Among the top grossing games, new titles made up 20.5 percent of September revenue and established franchises 79.5 percent. The biggest new releases were Wardogs, which earned 86.9 million dollars after its early access launch on 10 September, Onimusha: Way of the Sword with 30.4 million and The Blood of Dawnwalker with 26.9 million. Free to play games remain enormous as well. Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, PUBG and Dota 2 together earned almost 168 million dollars in September

The surprise is that this growth is happening while PC hardware prices are rising sharply, with memory and graphics card costs well up this year. People are spending more on games even as upgrades become harder to afford. Perhaps some are putting money into games instead of hardware, or playing older titles that run on the machines they already own

Are you spending more on PC games this year, or less? And with 21,000 releases a year, how do you find games worth playing?

Steam hits record $1.7 billion in September 2026 despite soaring PC hardware costs - platform approaches 21,000 new releases in 2026, on track to top $20 billion annuallywww.tomshardware.com