What are the most succesful publishers on Steam in the last few years?

The most successful publishers on Steam in the last few years are Valve, Electronic Arts, Bandai Namco, Ubisoft, and 2K, with Valve leading by a wide margin in all-time revenue and Bandai Namco being the top Japanese publisher. However, the landscape is shifting as indie and self-published titles have captured an unprecedented share of revenue, with indie games generating $4 billion on Steam from January to September 2024, or 48% of total full-game revenue34.

Top Publishers by All-Time Revenue on Steam

According to Sensor Tower's Japan Game Market Insights 2025 report, the global all-time revenue ranking on Steam as of August 2025 is:

The report notes that "Japan maintains a powerful footprint on Steam, with Bandai Namco, SEGA, and Capcom ranking among the global top ten publishers by all-time revenue"1.

Web source SteamDB provides a slightly different all-time ranking based on follower counts: "1. Valve, 35, 16,049,326, 2,161,549, 87.88% · 2. Electronic Arts, 186, 4,954,333, 1,493,591, 76.60% · 3. Ubisoft, 165, 3,773,552..."81. Gamalytic's publisher list shows Valve at $16.7 billion all-time revenue, followed by KRAFTON at $5.7 billion and Electronic Arts at $5 billion87.

Top Japanese Publishers on Steam

Within Japan, the all-time revenue ranking on Steam is:

Sensor Tower notes that "FromSoftware shows impact despite fewer releases" and that "Indie publishers like Pocketpair, Arc System Works, and Playism also demonstrate Japan's growing creative diversity across PC and console markets"1.

The Rise of Indie and Self-Published Success

The most striking trend is the surge of indie and self-published games. According to the Global State of Game Publishing & Marketing 2025 Industry Report, "Self-publishing platforms such as Steam, itch.io, Epic Games Store... have lowered the entry barriers for indie game developers who can independently develop and publish their games without relying on large publishers"3. The report highlights that "Palworld, developed and published by Pocketpair, became the biggest third-party game launch ever on Xbox Game Pass, dominated the Steam charts... Till January 2024, the game had garnered sales of over US$440 million"3.

The Xsolla State of Play: Summer 2024 report states that "Indie games are making an unprecedented impact, with 5 of the top 10 highest-grossing games on Steam in 2024 (Palworld, Granblue, Last Epoch, Lethal Company, and Enshrouded) created by publishers classified as indie"6712.

According to the Room 8 Group report, "In 2024, the indie games market reached high revenue levels, nearly matching the revenue of AAA and AA titles for the first time. From January to September 2024, indie games made $4B USD on Steam, or 48% of total full-game revenue"34.

Top Self-Published Games (2019–2024)

The Global State of Game Publishing & Marketing 2025 Industry Report lists the top self-published games by revenue:

The report notes that "there has been a stark increase in the number of self-published hits over the last five years (2019-2023), which has translated into a thriving indie-gaming market despite a broader industry slowdown"61.

Publishers Dominating Engagement (MAU)

Newzoo's PC & Console Gaming Report 2024 identifies the publishers that captured the top 80% of monthly active users (MAU) across all 12 months of 2023: "2K, Activision Publishing, Bandai Namco, BHVR, Bethesda, Blizzard, Bungie, CDPR, Capcom, Epic Games, Epic Games Publishing, Mojang, Psyonix, Riot, Roblox, Rockstar, SIE, Square Enix, Ubisoft, Valve, Xbox Games Studio, miHoYo"3335. The report notes that "a group of 23 publishers was consistently present in this list in 2023, with five additional publishers appearing in this ranking at least eight months. This left little room for other publishers to break through"33.

Steam Revenue Growth and Publisher Class Performance

Sensor Tower's State of Gaming 2026 report shows that "AAA Action games drove the most Steam premium revenue growth in 2025, with top performers including Split Fiction, Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced, and Red Dead Redemption 2"2. The report also notes that "2024 Indie publisher revenue was up 77% vs. 2023, making 2025 an excellent year in historical context"2.

InvestGame's Q4 & FY 2024 Gaming Deals Report states that "Steam continues to beat all-time high records, with AA/indie teams being the major revenue driver," showing a "Full-Game Sales CAGR 2019-2024 of +22% for AA/Indie publishers" compared to "+15% for AAA publishers"9.

Top Steam Games Released in 2024 by Revenue

The State of Gaming & Influencer Marketing 2025 report lists the top Steam games released in 2024:

The report notes that "Among the games released in 2024, the award-winning Black Myth: Wukong naturally led the race, but Palworld and Helldivers 2 carved out their own success stories"8.

Cross-Platform Publisher Performance

Sensor Tower's State of Gaming 2026 report ranks the top cross-platform publishers by downloads in 2025: "Embracer Group saw the most cross-platform downloads of the year, driven by a hypercasual mobile heavy portfolio. Electronic Arts was #2 overall, and led all publishers on PC/Console downloads, followed by Take-Two Interactive"58. The report adds that "EA had a strong year on PC/Console, with Battlefield 6, EA SPORTS FC 25, and EA SPORTS FC26 as the top three bestselling AAA games of the year"58.

Gaps in Coverage

The available sources do not provide a single, unified ranking of Steam publishers by revenue for each individual year from 2024 to 2026. Most all-time revenue rankings are from 2025, and year-over-year comparisons are limited to specific segments (e.g., indie vs. AAA, or specific genres). There is no breakdown of publisher performance by region (e.g., Europe vs. Asia) for Steam specifically, and the sources do not cover the financial performance of Chinese publishers like Tencent and NetEase on Steam in detail, though they are noted as major cross-platform players58. Additionally, the impact of Steam's revenue share (30%) on publisher profitability is mentioned in web sources82 but not addressed in the library documents.