Skip to content
Gamosy
Sign Up

Steam Wishlist Break-Even Calculator

Forget '10K wishlists.' Calculate your real target by price, genre, and regional mix.

Read the guide that explains the math

Your Inputs

Launch price on Steam. We apply the 30% platform cut automatically.

What you need to earn back from Steam sales, net of taxes.

Loyal wishlisters, long decision cycles. Launch-week wishlist-to-sale rate: 22%.

60% tier-1 / 40% tier-2

Tier-1 = US/UK/DE/FR/CA/AU/JP/KR (full price). Tier-2 = LATAM / SEA / EE / Turkey — Steam PPP averages ~55% of list price. If you don't know, leave it at 60%.

Your Target

Required wishlists to break even26,414Red — Unrealistic for most indies. Cut budget, raise price, narrow regional targeting, or extend your pre-launch runway before shipping.
Net per sale$10.49After Steam's 30% cut
Effective per sale$8.60Weighted by tier-1 / tier-2 PPP
Required sales5,811At 22% wishlist conversion
This is a break-even estimate, not a prediction. Launch success depends on marketing execution, demo quality, community strength, and timing. Compare this number against your current wishlist velocity extrapolated to launch day — if the gap is large, change one variable (price, budget, or audience plan) before you ship.

How the Math Works

The calculator uses a deliberately simple model — not to replicate a AAA financial plan, but to tell you whether your current wishlist count is survival-mode or launch-mode.

  1. Net revenue per sale = price × 0.70 (Steam's 30% cut)
  2. Effective revenue per sale = (tier-1% × net revenue) + (tier-2% × net revenue × 0.55), where tier-2 regions pay roughly 55% of list price under Steam's regional pricing
  3. Required sales = recoverable budget ÷ effective revenue per sale
  4. Required wishlists = required sales ÷ genre launch-week conversion rate

Disclaimer

Conversion rates, regional multipliers, and PPP factors are estimates aggregated from public postmortems, GDC talks, published Steamworks reports, and our own sample of indie launches. They are medians, not laws of physics. Your actual launch will depend on marketing execution, demo quality, community strength, timing, and luck. Treat the output as a sanity check, not a prediction.

Next steps