⚡ Quick Read
- Slay the Spire 2 sold an estimated 5.3 million copies in March 2026, generating around $108 million in revenue on Steam alone
- Crimson Desert came in second with roughly 1.9 million copies, despite a mixed launch that has since turned around
- Resident Evil Requiem and Climber Animals Together both landed at around 1.2 million copies each
- RE3 Remake sold nearly 994,000 units, boosted by a steep 90% discount during Capcom’s anniversary sale
- All figures are estimates from analyst Rhys Elliott at Alinea Analytics — not official numbers from publishers
- Slay the Spire 2 is still in Early Access and only available on PC — a full launch could push numbers even higher
March 2026 was one of the most stacked months in recent gaming memory. A long-awaited open-world RPG, a beloved survival horror sequel, and a quirky little co-op climber all dropped within weeks of each other. And yet, somehow, none of them came close to a card-based roguelike that quietly rolled into Early Access on March 5th.
According to new analysis from Alinea Analytics, Slay the Spire 2 was the single best-selling new game on Steam in March 2026 — and it wasn’t even close.
Slay the Spire 2 Put Up Numbers That Shouldn’t Be Possible for an Early Access Game
Analyst Rhys Elliott estimates that Mega Crit’s sequel shifted around 5.3 million copies across the month, generating approximately $108 million in revenue — on Steam alone, and still in Early Access. To put that in perspective, the original Slay the Spire took close to two years in Early Access before hitting 1.5 million sales. The sequel blew past that number in its first week.
Peak concurrent players hit 574,638 — over ten times the original game’s all-time peak — making it the most-played roguelike in Steam history. Even weeks after launch, it was holding fourth place on Steam’s daily active player charts, sitting just behind Counter-Strike 2, PUBG, and Dota 2.
The wishlist-to-purchase conversion rate was 31% during its debut week. For context, the industry average sits somewhere around 7–10%. More than half of players had already logged over 20 hours within the first two weeks. One percent had cleared 100 hours. The game wasn’t just selling — it was being played obsessively.
What makes all of this even more remarkable is that Slay the Spire 2 is still only available on PC. No console ports. No version 1.0. The full launch will likely push a second major wave of sales, and additional platforms will bring entirely new audiences. For now though, Mega Crit has already out-earned the entire lifetime Steam revenue of both Hades II and Hollow Knight: Silksong — each estimated at around $83 million — in a single month.
Crimson Desert Sold Nearly 2 Million Copies — But Had a Complicated Launch
Coming in second was Pearl Abyss’s Crimson Desert, which managed an estimated 1.9 million copies on Steam in March despite one of the messier launches of the year. The game arrived on March 19 to “Mixed” Steam reviews, with players calling out clunky controls, cryptic quest design, overwhelming systems, and an AI art controversy that Pearl Abyss quickly apologized for and addressed. The studio’s stock dropped nearly 30% on launch day as investors reacted to the less-than-enthusiastic critical reception — a Metacritic score of 78 had been enough to spook the market.
But the story didn’t end there. Pearl Abyss came out swinging with rapid post-launch patches, addressing control issues, expanding fast travel, fixing inventory problems, and adjusting boss difficulty. Within days, Steam reviews climbed from Mixed to Mostly Positive. Within a week, they hit Very Positive. The word-of-mouth started catching up to the sales numbers. Analyst Elliott put it plainly: Crimson Desert’s community management has been “frankly incredible,” and its word of mouth has continued to spread since launch. He called it one of 2026’s defining success stories in the making.
Across all platforms, Crimson Desert has crossed 3 million copies sold — solid enough numbers that Pearl Abyss has already begun work on its next game, DukeV, using the same engine.
Climber Animals Together Is the Wildcard Nobody Expected
Bronze place was a genuine surprise. Climber Animals Together — a budget co-op game with an ultra-low price point — matched Resident Evil Requiem’s unit count at roughly 1.2 million copies, but generated under $6 million in revenue for the month due to its near-giveaway pricing.
The story behind its March surge is an interesting one. After a relatively quiet debut back in 2024, the game exploded in early 2026 following a self-release push in China. It rode short-video platforms like Douyu and Bilibili to virality — a pattern Elliott calls “friendslop,” where low-cost social games spread through clip culture before the purchases follow. It’s a reminder that raw unit volume and actual revenue can tell two very different stories.
Resident Evil Requiem Proved That Premium Pricing Still Has a Place on PC
Resident Evil Requiem came in at around 1.2 million copies on Steam in March, generating approximately $70 million in revenue despite matching Climber Animals Together on units sold. That’s the power of a full-price premium release from a franchise that knows exactly who its audience is. With total Steam sales now sitting around 2.9 million copies, Capcom’s latest survival horror entry is proving to be one of the strongest games of the year commercially, even with competition from some of the year’s biggest releases.
And just below Requiem, Resident Evil 3 Remake sold just under 994,000 copies — a number that would have been impressive in any normal month, and is doubly impressive when you consider it’s a game from 2020. The driver? A 90% discount during Capcom’s 30th Anniversary sale that brought RE3 Remake down to $3.99. As Elliott noted, the Steam audience is “far more receptive to deep, aggressive discounting than other platforms,” and Capcom knows how to work that lever. New Requiem players inevitably went back through the franchise’s back catalogue, and a four-dollar price tag made that decision very easy.
It’s a smart PC-first strategy — one that other publishers would do well to study. The halo effect of a big new release lifting older titles in the same franchise is a real and measurable thing on Steam, and Capcom has become one of the best in the business at engineering it.
What March’s Numbers Actually Mean
The real takeaway from March isn’t just that Slay the Spire 2 sold a lot of copies. It’s what that says about what PC players actually want. A small independent studio, a game built on mechanics rather than spectacle, priced at $25, still in Early Access — and it outsold every AAA release in the same month by a factor of nearly three.
It’s a data point that fits a broader pattern. The games that hold player attention month after month tend to be the deeply replayable ones — the kind you come back to not because there’s new content, but because the core loop is just that good. Slay the Spire 2 has that in spades. So does Crimson Desert, if its improving review scores are anything to go by.
For more on how Steam’s live-service market is shifting, check out our breakdown of the Arc Raiders crafting overhaul — another case study in a developer leaning hard into community feedback to hold its playerbase. And if you want to understand what happens when a game fails to do that, our piece on Marathon’s player count drop paints a stark contrast.
March was a reminder that on Steam, the best game doesn’t always win — but when it does, the numbers can be genuinely staggering. Slay the Spire 2 wasn’t just March’s best-selling game. It may end up being one of the defining commercial stories of 2026, and it hasn’t even fully launched yet.
If that’s what Early Access looks like, the full release is going to be something else entirely. And if you’re curious what subscription services are doing with their game lineups while all this is happening, our look at Xbox Game Pass losing Metaphor: ReFantazio is worth a read — because the battle for player attention in 2026 is playing out on multiple fronts at once.
