Over two years, the number of idle games on Steam has increased fivefold: the state of the niche, revenue of top projects, and other metrics

Incremental games are one of the fastest-growing segments on PC. We present a comprehensive benchmark report on the state of this niche to understand how the idle game market currently looks on Steam.

Topics covered in this article:

key characteristics of idlers and incremental games that distinguish them as a separate niche;
how developers monetize idle games: the main methods;
retention rates of popular idlers: from D1 to D90;
a benchmark of the idler and incremental games segment: release counts, median revenue, etc.;
earnings of top representatives of the genre, as well as the harsh reality of the market;
the highest-grossing idle games on Steam: both free-to-play and paid.