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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 annually
PC gaming continues to see an upward trend despite rising hardware costs, as Steam is estimated to have generated a record $1.7 billion in revenue for September 2026. According to Alinea Analytics, Steam had its best September ever with a 13% jump compared to the previous record set in September 2025. It also had its strongest third quarter on record, generating an estimated $5.5 billion in revenue, an increase of 12% from the same period last year. That brings Steam's estimated revenue for the first nine months of 2026 to $16.5 billion, compared to $14.5 billion during the same period in 2025.
Among the 500 top-grossing games on Steam last month, new IP releases in 2026 generated 20.5% of the revenue, while established IP accounted for 79.5%, including 3.8% from remakes and remasters. Several major releases helped drive revenue during the month, including Wardogs, generating an estimated $86.9 million since its early-access launch on September 10; Onimusha: Way of the Sword at $30.4 million; and The Blood of Dawnwalker bringing in $26.9 million.
(Image credit: Alinea Analytics)
Free-to-play games also remained an important part of Steam's business, with Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, PUBG, and Dota 2 alone generating almost $168 million combined in September, which is nearly 10% of Steam's total estimated monthly revenue.
Steam is also closing in on a new annual record for the number of game releases. As of October 1, Steam has a total of 20,220 game releases in 2026. Another 1,156 titles are currently scheduled to launch in October itself, meaning that if those releases arrive as planned, it would put Steam ahead of the 21,268 games released in 2025.
The numbers suggest that while building a gaming PC might be expensive in 2026, it has yet to translate into a slowdown in PC game spending. With a packed release schedule for the coming months, Alinea estimates that Steam could potentially surpass $20 billion in annual revenue for the first time.
It is also worth mentioning that Steam extends beyond desktop and laptop gaming. Valve's Steam Deck gave the platform a dedicated handheld audience, allowing users to access most of their Steam game library on a portable device. The company has also expanded into living-room gaming with the newly launched Steam Machine. It is additionally working on extending support for Steam OS, its gaming-focused operating system, to more devices.
Kunal Khullar is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. He is a long time technology journalist and reviewer specializing in PC components and peripherals, and welcomes any and every question around building a PC.
Although making more money is a number to brag about the number of games being sold is not so much. Steam always had massive amounts of trash. That has massively increased in the last year or so because of all the AI slop games. You have some indi game maker be successful with some new game concept and you have a large amounts of AI copies within days. Most these games are pretty simple compare to the AAA games. This allows them to be quickly duplicated likely before the original company made much money. The problem is they can't copyright the general concept of their game. Popular games always had copies but it was much more effort when a human had to code them.
