How to calculate game sales based on the number of reviews on Steam in 2022?
Multiplying the number of reviews by a certain average value for the market is one of the easiest ways to roughly estimate the sales of a game on Steam. Gaming expert Simon Carless made adjustments to this system and updated the median multipliers for games with different runs.
It turned out that:
In 2022, the median multiplier increased from x30 (i.e., with 3000 reviews, we could talk about 90 thousand copies sold) to almost x60 for hit novelties;
▪️the fewer copies the game has sold, the lower the multiplier (with sales of less than 1000 copies, the median is x20);
The multiplier is growing rapidly and reaches x59 for titles with sales of 50,000-90,000 copies (but after 100 thousand there is a slight decline to x48);
the dynamics is explained simply — the higher the sales, the greater the influx of casual audience, which is much less willing to write reviews;
The median multiplier value for all games released in 2022 remained at the same level (x29) — it’s just that this indicator has increased significantly for hit novelties;
In general, there is a tendency to decrease the ratio of reviews to sales (until 2016, for example, the median was around x75 (!), and then gradually fell).
IMPORTANT: such calculations should never be taken as one hundred percent true. Plus, there are always exceptions: Elden Ring has over 400 thousand reviews on Steam, but its multiplier is (most likely) equal to x20-25. This is observed in some “phenomenon games”, which are massively discussed and therefore write more reviews in comparison with other box office hits.
