60–90% of Steam's release growth is AI games — almost none make money

Full text

A new study of Steam games that use AI suggests that, while the tech is helping fuel a boom in new releases on Valve's platform, very few of those games are actually making much money. That's not a measure of Steam players rejecting AI, however – instead, it seems that games using AI are just as likely to fail as those without it.

This analysis comes courtesy of a Substack post from Sulka Haro, former lead designer on Habbo Hotel and now CEO of Mainframe Industries, the studio behind sandbox MMO Pax Dei. The study "is built from a full census of 53,597 games released between July 2023 and July 2026 – not a sample," Haro explains. "For each one I recorded whether its store page carries the 'AI Generated Content Disclosure' section, when the flag first appeared, an estimate of its revenue, and the actual text developers wrote."

More Steam games are being released every month, and while that partly includes more non-AI games, titles released with AI disclosures are growing at a much faster rate. Non-AI games have grown from a release cadence of around 1,030 to around 1,320 per month since Steam started requiring AI disclosures in 2024, while AI-flagged games now account for around 530 new releases each month.

"Depending on the window you pick, 60–90% of the growth in monthly Steam releases is AI-flagged games," Haro says. In 2024, AI-flagged games accounted for 10.9% of releases on Steam. In 2025, that percentage grew to 19.9%, and in 2026, the number reached 30.8%.

Of that growing number of AI-flagged releases, "almost none of them make money – because almost no games do," Haro says. Across every measured game, both those that use AI and those that don't, the top 1% of titles account for around 94% of estimated revenue. Revenue here is estimated based on total number of reviews, which is by no means a perfect metric, but it's enough to show just how hit-driven Steam is.

(Image credit: Pearl Abyss) In most quarters, games with AI disclosures are selling less than non-AI titles. In the first quarter of 2026, AI-flagged games made up 28% of new releases but just 17% of estimated sales. In the second quarter, AI games made up 33% of new releases but 10% of sales.

But here, too, is an example of the effect one big hit can make: in the fourth quarter of 2025, the AI sales percentage of 27% actually exceeded the proportion of new releases, which was 25%. That's the quarter when Arc Raiders , which has an AI content disclosure, became a hit.

"It's worth noting the picture painted by the data in this post series should not be taken as indicative of… pretty much anything," Haro says. "AI tooling is just that – making a great game still takes a great team with a vision and I would say it's unlikely the current large language model path will ever get us to a point where a model can replace a human in this regard."

To that point, Haro notes that the two biggest games with AI disclosures on Steam are Crimson Desert and Arc Raiders, both of which were in development for many years. Would that development time have shortened if AI tools were more widely available when production began? Maybe, but given how reluctant most developers seem to be about using AI , its actual value as a tool still hasn't been fully tested.

"Probably the biggest single conclusion you can make from this analysis is quite simple – most games that currently feature the AI flag are small productions from small teams and these typically struggle to succeed in Steam, whether AI tooling has been used in the production or not," Haro concludes. "Judging by the data, AI tooling has not been a silver bullet in these productions. While AI use seems to have enabled a large influx of new games to land into the market, we're still not in a world where a small team can rely on AI replacing time and effort to make a great game and find commercial success."

"Gamers don't want it": Palworld lead says Pocketpair doesn't touch AI because players hate it and artists "like doing stuff themselves."