Launch odds
by priceOdds of a $100k+ first year, by price
Lens checkAudience split. Standard: the base the others are compared with. West-facing view: moves the answer. Without the breakout: holds. Last 18 months: holds.
Compare pricesTicker: price and year-over-year change for 40 genres. Price is the median estimated first-year revenue of indie paid launches. The change shows for genres with 100+ launches. The same figures are on the Genres page.
At $10 to $20: 37 in 100 earned $100k+, against 21 in 100 for all genres at that price.
Genres / Roguelike Deckbuilder
19 in 100 Roguelike Deckbuilder launches earned $100k+ in their first year, over twice the 1 in 15 for all genres. Price matters most: at $10 to $20 it is 37 in 100, against 21 in 100 for all genres. No single game dominates: the biggest, Balatro, holds 44% of its money.
Fixed order: odds, earnings, the one-hit check and life cycle, then demand, upcoming and the two gold cards. Click a price on Launch odds to read the page at that price. Figures of 11 Nov 2026.
Odds of a $100k+ first year, by price
Lens checkAudience split. Standard: the base the others are compared with. West-facing view: moves the answer. Without the breakout: holds. Last 18 months: holds.
Compare pricesEstimated first-year earnings. Sales on Steam before Steam's cut; about 58% of it reaches the developer.
Lens checkHolds in 2 of 3, 1 too few to tell. Standard: the base the others are compared with. West-facing view: holds. Without the breakout: holds. Last 18 months: too few to tell.
How earnings workMoney in one gameSpread
44 in 100dollars went to one game
18 in 100hit $100k+ without it, was 19 in 100
Lens checkAudience split. Standard: the base the others are compared with. West-facing view: moves the answer. Without the breakout: holds. Last 18 months: holds.
Why medians hold upNew launches a year, all store games
Holds players vs same-age games, descriptive
Lens checkWithout the breakout: holds. Standard: the base the others are compared with. West-facing view: not run yet. Without the breakout: holds. Last 18 months: not run yet.
See all 107 genresWishlistable now, most wanted first
Best odds of a $100k+ year, with expectedFree until launch
Lens checkAudience split +1. Standard: the base the others are compared with. West-facing view: moves the answer. Without the breakout: moves the answer. Last 18 months: holds.
Open free previewEvery board, one cardFree until launch
Every count on this page, with its sample and date, in seven labels. The numbered notes beside each label say what each figure means, where it comes from and what limits it.
Indie paid Steam launches 12 to 36 months old: old enough to have a full first year, recent enough to be today's market. Games from major publishers, games over $40, adult and free games are left out.
246 of the 2,360 store games tagged Roguelike Deckbuilder are in it; the rest are older, newer, free or from big publishers. All genres together: 26,758 launches.
Odds, earnings, lenses and pairs: figures made on 2 Nov 2026 from GMD's warehouse of store data.
Boards, launch counts and upcoming games: the store data of 11 Nov 2026. Every figure is derived from public store data; no game list is copied.
A price band needs 30 launches to be read on this page (the Sample filter; never under 10). Below that the page says "too few" instead of a figure, and under 30 launches or 5 hits a chance is written as a count, such as "10 of 20 launches".
Even at 30 launches, one extra hit moves the chance by over 3 in 100, so treat close figures as equal. Here: $20 to $40 has 6. Pairs need 30+ launches to be ranked: 7 of 11 qualify.
Revenue is estimated from reviews times price, so a dearer game reaches $100k with fewer reviews. That makes odds climb with price in every genre. All genres: 1 in 230 under $5, 1 in 28 $5 to $10, 21 in 100 $10 to $20, 44 in 100 $20 to $40.
So compare odds within a price band. "Expected at its prices" is the chance this genre would have if each of its launches did as well as all games at the same price: 11 in 100.
Per 246 launches, 2 Nov 2026, all prices
MeasureEstimated
A hit is an estimated first-year revenue of $100k or more: store reviews x a reviews-to-sales multiplier x price x the share of list price actually paid after discounts, with a regional price adjustment (games sold mostly to Chinese-speaking players earn less per sale, because regional prices are lower).
Sales on Steam before Steam's cut; about 58% of it reaches the developer.
Nobody publishes the true multiplier. Across its likely range the all-genre chance moves from 4.8 to 8.4 in 100, and a third of all hits sit within 2x of the $100k line. Read every chance as "about": this genre is about 19 in 100.
Half of the launches earned more, half less. One huge hit cannot move it, which is why this page uses medians, not averages.
The all-genre figure beside it is the cohort median ($562, 26,758 launches). "Typical, last 4 quarters" further down is a different measure, named for what it is.
Typical figures are shown from 100 launches; below that the page shows the chance of clearing $1k, $10k and $100k.
With about 300 genres, chance alone gives the best one a lead near 1.8 times its expected odds (2.05 times for the top 5 in 100).
Roguelike Deckbuilder beats its prices about 1.7 times (actual 19 in 100, expected 11 in 100), under 1.8 times, so the lead could be luck. There are many more pairs than genres, so the Best pairs card uses higher lines: 2.37 times, and 2.56 for the top 5 in 100.
Per 246 launches, 2 Nov 2026, all prices
MeasureStandard is the base
Each lens reruns the figures on a slice of the launches. Standard is the base: every launch in the cohort. It is not a lens that can hold or move.
A lens moves the answer when its chance of $100k+ differs from the standard by more than a random slice of the same size would, with 5+ hits on both sides, or when its typical earnings move over 25% with 100+ launches in the lens. Without the breakout moves it when one game earned over half the money. With fewer hits it is too few to tell. Pips: green holds, coral moves, grey too few or not run.
Lens figures cover all prices; they are not split by price band yet.
The West-facing view keeps games mostly reviewed outside China: it sets aside games with 35% or more of their reviews in Chinese (13 of 246 here).
Review language is measured only for games with 2,000+ reviews; for smaller games it is guessed from the game's name. The audience split is genre-specific: leaving those games out changes typical earnings 53% in FMV and 19% in Dating Sim, yet barely moves the all-genre chance (6.1 to 6.0 in 100).
Here typical earnings move -5.2%, inside the 25% line, but 37.4% of the genre's revenue-weighted reviews are in Chinese, largely Balatro's players: much of this genre's money comes from Chinese-speaking players, while the typical launch reads the same.
Last 18 months keeps launches 18 months old or newer (87 of 246). Tastes move: only 9 of the top 15 genres by hit rate stay top 15 on recent launches.
When the two disagree, prefer the recent figure. Here: 17 in 100 against 19 in 100, typical $9,255 against $9,763: it holds.
A genre is one-hit when one game holds over half its money. Across genres the top game holds 29% in the median genre and the top tenth of games 94%; 57 genres have one game over half.
No single game dominates: the biggest, Balatro, holds 44% of its money. Totals and shares are safe to read here. Without it, 18 in 100 still hit $100k+.
Per store data, 11 Nov 2026
MeasureAll store games
New launches count every store game with the tag released in each 12 months, not only the indie cohort, from the store data of 11 Nov 2026.
389 against 170 is +128.8%: more games now compete for the same players. Earlier years and a life-cycle stage are not computed yet.
1,046 store pages carry the tag and can be wishlisted. 50 are on Steam's wishlist chart (1 adult games left out).
A date counts as verified only when the release-calendar job checked it against the live store, for the next 90 days. Other dates are as the store lists them.
Rising demand: games here hold their players better than similar games of the same age (reviews, games launched since 2021), Aug to Oct 2026 against 2025, from 75 games. It describes; the backtest found it does not predict launches.
Ranks are among 116 (Launch success), 135 (Most anticipated), 107 (Rising demand), 126 (Typical earnings) genres. Typical, last 4 quarters ($9,124, 145 launches) uses launches of 2024Q4 to 2025Q3 only, so it differs from the cohort median.
Per genre, as of 2 Nov 2026
MeasureSaid, never guessed
Derived figures only, estimated from public store data. GMD is not affiliated with Valve.
Lens figures by price band: lens figures are not split by price yet.
Life-cycle stage: needs launch counts further back than two years.
Gaining fast: follower readings started 30 Sep; first readings 13 Oct.
An outside check: the backtest scores predictions against the same review-based estimate, so it shows review counts are predictable, not revenue. Fixing that needs outside sales data.
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SubjectRoguelike Deckbuilder this month: odds, earnings, releases
Ticker: 30 upcoming games dated within 90 days, with wishlist rank, release date and followers. The same list is on the Upcoming page.