How much do visual novels make? What Steam data and developer reports show

Most visual novels earn very little. The best available figure is from Gamalytic’s 2023 study of Steam: visual novels, like NSFW games, have a median lifetime gross revenue of about $1,000 to $2,000. After Valve’s 30% share, that is $700 to $1,400 for the developer, before any costs. At the top end, a few titles sell tens of thousands of copies, and a very few earn far more.

That is the answer for Steam, and Steam is only one channel. There is no public data for DLsite, itch.io, Patreon or direct sales, and the studios that do very well rarely publish figures. This page sets out what the evidence does show, what it cannot, and how to put the numbers beside a realistic budget. It is written for developers weighing a visual novel project, not as financial advice.

Key points

• Median Steam visual novel: about $1,000 to $2,000 gross. Per Gamalytic’s 2023 report.
• Gross means before Valve’s 30%. The developer’s share is about 70%.
• The genre is crowded. Over 4,000 visual novels and over 4,000 NSFW titles released in recent years.
• Hits exist. One English release passed 30,000 Steam copies in 2014.
• Cheap adult titles have been the profit engine. A publisher said so in 2014.
• Revenue is skewed. A small share of games earns almost everything.

What Steam’s data shows

Every Steam game

In October 2023, Game World Observer reported the findings of Gamalytic’s September 2023 Steam market report. The numbers frame everything else.

Gamalytic’s figures are gross revenue before Valve’s 30% cut, and exclude DLC and in-app purchases. They are estimates, built from concurrent player counts, a review-based multiplier and publicly disclosed sales data. The report also found that more than 70% of games released in the period were hobbyist projects, which pulls the median down.

Visual novels

The same report puts visual novels in a short list of crowded genres. Game World Observer summarises it: visual novels and NSFW titles are “one of the most overcrowded genres on Steam”, with “over 4,000 projects released in each category in recent years”, and “their median revenue is between $1,000 and $2,000.”

For comparison, the report lists other genres with much higher medians: about $10,000 for open world survival craft, $8,000 for 4X strategy and $8,000 for colony sims, each with far fewer releases. The pattern is the usual one: where there are many releases and low barriers to entry, the median falls.

Two things limit how far this can be pushed.

1. It is from 2023. Steam has added many games since. Gamalytic’s tag-level statistics change as new data arrives, and we could not retrieve a current visual novel figure.
2. Visual novels and NSFW titles overlap. The report treats them as two categories with the same median range, and a game can be in both.

What the median means in practice

A gross median of $1,000 to $2,000 sounds small, and the arithmetic makes it smaller.

The $100 fee is Valve’s Steam Direct charge per game. The table ignores tax, payment fees and anything spent on art, music or marketing.

Set that beside a real budget. Toadhouse Games published a line-by-line cost of $5,185 in paid work for a one-hour visual novel, and estimated about $10,000 if writing and programming had been paid; our breakdown is in how much it costs to make a visual novel. A median game would not recover a cost of that size. A developer who makes everything themselves has a lower cash cost, but spends hundreds or thousands of hours, which the median does not repay either.

As a rough guide to copies, a $10 game at the median gross would have sold around 100 to 200 copies. That is our arithmetic on the published range, ignoring discounts, and not a measured figure.

What the high end looks like

The median is not the whole picture. Revenue is heavily skewed, and some visual novels sell far beyond it.

Go! Go! Nippon! The English release of Overdrive’s game, published by MangaGamer, sold about 10,000 copies on Steam by January 2014, which a USgamer writer called a “big success for a visual novel”, and passed 30,000 by October 2014, according to Wikipedia. It matters beyond its own sales. MangaGamer’s John Pickett said in 2014 that after its sales and those of Higurashi, Valve became “more open to releasing visual novels” on Steam.

Others. Wikipedia’s article on visual novels notes that The Invisible Guardian briefly topped Steam’s global best-seller list in 2019. Visual novels also sell outside Steam, on stores and platforms that Gamalytic’s Steam data does not capture.

The gap between the median and the hits is the point. Revenue on Steam, in the Gamalytic data, is concentrated in a small share of games: 5.6% of all games earned over $200,000, and 67% earned under $5,000.

What publishers have said

Publisher comments are older and anecdotal, but they show how the economics work from the inside.

In July 2014, Siliconera reported an answer from John Pickett, MangaGamer’s head translator and marketing manager. He said the company can generally break even on each title and make some profit, but that longer, story-centric games carry a risk of loss because of the costs of their larger text volume. He added that cheaper nukige titles are quite profitable and often offset losses from story-centric games. The article gives no revenue figures.

That is one company’s view from 2014, about English localisations of Japanese games, not a rule about all visual novels. It is consistent with the idea that cost control matters as much as sales.

What a small developer’s result can look like

A published postmortem for a very small game shows the low end plainly. The developer of Sex Robot Road Trip, sold on itch.io at $6.99 from 2017, reported that launch-day sales were “literally zero”, that gross profits so far were $222, and that costs were $120 for music and a Steam licence. Sales roughly doubled, from about 20 to about 40 overall, after a PC Gamer writer included the game on a sale list. It is one game, from one small developer, on one store, and it is not typical of anything except how small a first release can be.

What moves the numbers

The evidence points to a few things that separate better outcomes from worse ones.

• Reviews. GameDiscoverCo’s 2025 data found that the 20 best wishlist converters averaged a 91% first-week review score, against 67% for the 20 worst. See Steam wishlist conversion rate.
• Price. Gamalytic’s median rises from about $700 overall to about $4,000 above $5 and about $17,000 above $10. Some of that is selection, because higher-priced games are usually bigger projects, but the pattern is clear.
• An audience before launch. Wishlists convert at about 0.15 first-week sales each at the median, and adult games do somewhat better than the market.
• Cost. A cheap game needs fewer sales to break even, which is what MangaGamer’s comment implies.
• Channels. Steam is not the only market; see where adult games can be sold in 2026, and for recurring income, Patreon alternatives for NSFW creators.

Is it worth making a visual novel?

The data does not say not to. It says that the typical result is small, and that planning around the typical result is sensible.

1. Expect the median, hope for better. A budget that depends on a hit is a gamble.
2. Keep the first project small. Length drives cost; see how long a visual novel should be.
3. Count your time. A project that pays $1,000 for a thousand hours is a hobby, whatever it is called.
4. Treat the first game as a way in. Experience, an audience and a portfolio are worth money even when the first sales are not.
5. Do not rely on one store. Spread across channels where the rules allow.

What is still unknown

• Current visual novel medians. We found only the 2023 figures.
• Revenue outside Steam. DLsite, itch.io, Patreon and direct sales have no comparable public data.
• The adult-only median. Gamalytic’s report gives one range for visual novels and NSFW titles.
• How many developers make a living. We found no systematic survey.

How this page was put together

The revenue figures come from Gamalytic’s Steam market report of September 2023 as reported by Game World Observer, read on 20 October 2026. The sales of Go! Go! Nippon! come from Wikipedia, the comments from MangaGamer from Siliconera’s 2014 report, and the small-developer example from the developer’s own postmortem. The tables of net revenue and copies are our own arithmetic on the published figures.

Nothing on this page is financial advice. To report an error, see the corrections standard.