Can you make a living making games? Both sides of the data

How many people make a living making games alone?

Few, compared with everyone who works in games. Every year GDC, the biggest conference for game makers, asks professionals in the field how their work is going. In the 2026 survey, with more than 2,300 people answering², 4% said they were full-time solo developers, meaning people who make games alone and do nothing else. Another 4% do the same part time, alongside another job¹.

Most of the people surveyed, 62%, work at game companies and studios, on a salary¹. For most people who make a living from games, that means having a job in the field, not living off their own game.

The number has a limit: the survey hears from people who already see themselves as professionals and chose to answer. Someone who made a game in their spare time and went back to their old job barely shows up in it. The real share of people who tried to live off their own game and succeeded, out of everyone who tried, is probably smaller (our take).

How much do most games earn?

Very little, in most cases. Steam, the biggest store for PC games, does not publish each game's sales, so the numbers come from companies that estimate sales from the store's public data. An analysis based on Gamalytic, one of those companies, put together by the site Game Developers in August 2026, gave this picture of the games released in 2025³:

• about 65.9% grossed less than $1,000;
• about 40% did not even reach $100, the fee to put a game on Steam;
• only 8% passed $100,000 in gross revenue;
• and about 300 passed $1 million, according to Alinea Analytics, another company that estimates sales³.

These are estimates, not numbers from Valve, the company that owns Steam³. And they are gross revenue: before the store's cut, taxes and the cost of making the game. To see how much is left from each sale and what the median looked like in earlier years, read how much a game makes on Steam.

For the question on this page, what matters is the order of magnitude. Two out of three games do not even make a thousand dollars. Nobody lives on that, and most of the people who made those games were not counting on it either.

And how many games make real money?

More than you might think, and still a minority. In Valve's talk at GDC in March 2026, the company showed that 5,863 games grossed more than $100,000 on Steam in 2025, the best result in the store's history. In 2020 there had been about 3,000⁴.

The count appears to include games released in earlier years that kept selling, not just that year's games⁵. And $100,000 in gross revenue is not $100,000 in your pocket. Imagine a game that grossed exactly $100,000. The store keeps about 30%, leaving close to $70,000 before taxes and refunds (our math). If the game took two years to finish, or was made by three people, the amount per person per year drops a lot.

Even so, almost six thousand games above that mark means thousands of people and small studios live, at least for a while, off what they sell on Steam (our take). The income exists. It just is not spread evenly.

What does the story of someone who made it look like?

It almost always starts with someone who already had another job. The story of Vampire Survivors is one of the most told.

Luca Galante, an Italian programmer, moved to the United Kingdom wanting to make games. At first, with weak English, the only job he could get was at McDonald's. Two years later, he went to work as a programmer at a gambling company and rose to a mid-level management position. Fed up with the job, he made games late at night, on his own⁷.

Vampire Survivors went first to itch.io, an open store for independent games, and almost nobody noticed⁶. The game is simple: the character walks through an endless stage, the weapons attack on their own, waves of monsters come from every side and each defeated monster drops a little gem that gives new powers⁶. For the art, music and sounds, Galante spent about £1,100 on ready-made assets⁶.

In December 2021 the game arrived on Steam. That is why, when a big YouTuber made a video about it in early 2022, there was a place to buy it⁶⁷. By late January, more than 30,000 people were playing at the same time; the following month, more than 70,000⁶. Galante had just started a new job and, as he later told NME, left a week later, because he could not do both⁸. In 2023, the game won Best Game at the awards of the British film and TV academy, the BAFTA⁶.

Balatro, a poker-inspired card game made by a single person, tells a similar story. Its creator spent two and a half years on the game, which started as a side project, and only quit his job about a year before launch⁹. When it came out, in February 2024, it passed $1 million in gross revenue in eight hours, according to the publisher⁹.

Both are exceptions, and they were chosen here for that reason: they are the cases that worked out among thousands that did not. What they have in common is useful (our take): nobody quit their job to start. The game came first, small and in spare time, and the decision to quit came later, when people were already playing. Neither was made with AI.

Is working at a studio, on a salary, safer?

It is more predictable, and it is not guaranteed. In the same GDC survey, 28% of the professionals who answered had been laid off in the previous two years, and almost half of them (48%) had not yet found another job¹. In the United States, the share of laid-off respondents reached 33%¹.

In Brazil, the survey by Abragames, the association of Brazilian studios, released in 2022, counted 12,441 people working in the sector¹¹. It is old data, and it does not separate people on a salary from people living off their own game. It shows the profession exists there, not how much it pays.

Does AI change the math?

It changes the cost of making a game, not how hard it is to sell one (our take). In July 2026, the site Rest of World reported on game teams that shrank with AI, such as that of Emirhan Gül, a developer in Istanbul who opened his own studio and concluded he needed only two full-time people, compared with almost a dozen at his previous job¹⁰.

In the same report, Begüm Ceren Onar, a Turkish game designer laid off from a studio that cut 17 of its 20 employees, sums up the other side: according to her, more people are making games alone, but most do not make a living from it, and quantity does not mean success¹⁰.

Galante paid for ready-made art and sounds and wrote the code himself. Today, AI writes the code and helps with art and sound based on what you describe. That lowers the cost of making a small game. It does not lower the work of making someone want to play it, which is still up to whoever makes it. With more than 20,000 new games a year on Steam, that part weighs more; the numbers are in too many games already?.

So what is the realistic path?

Making your first game without depending on it to live (our take). The numbers at both ends point to the same place: income from games exists for some, nobody knows in advance for whom, and those who made it almost always started with a job paying the bills.

A few decisions come out of this:

• Keep your current income. The game is made in the hours you have left. How long that takes is in how long it takes to make a game.
• Start small. A small, finished game costs little, teaches a lot and can be published. There are ideas of the right size in what your first game should be.
• Put the game where people can play it. Vampire Survivors only had a chance because it was in a store when the YouTuber found it.
• Decide in advance what would make you quit your job. A sales number for several months in a row, not a one-week spike.

The famous games that started this way, with sources, are in famous games that started small.

The other side

The numbers on this page do not say you will make a living from games. Two out of three games released on Steam in 2025 grossed less than $1,000, by estimate, and only 4% of the professionals in the GDC survey make games alone for a living. The 5,863 games above $100,000 are real, but they include older games and refer to revenue before costs, not profit. Vampire Survivors and Balatro are exceptions, and their creators took years. A studio job has risk too: 28% of the professionals surveyed were laid off within two years. Nobody can promise you will get rich, or that you will make a living making games. What you can do is start without betting what pays your bills.

Your action plan

Check off what you've done. It's saved on this device, so you can pick up where you left off.

1. Write down how much you need each month to pay the bills.
2. Decide how many hours a week, outside work, you can give to your first game.
3. Pick a small idea that fits on one screen and in a match of a few minutes.
4. Look up three games on Steam similar to your idea and note how many reviews each one has.
5. Define what counts as "it worked" for your first game, without mentioning money.
6. Read how much a game makes on Steam before you think about charging for your game.