{"id":87007,"date":"2026-08-03T11:12:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=87007"},"modified":"2026-08-03T12:37:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T16:37:58","slug":"viral-steam-game-made-1-3-million-but-creator-only-got-2000-after-mass-refunds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=87007","title":{"rendered":"Viral Steam Game Made $1.3 Million But Creator Only Got $2,000 After Mass Refunds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An 18-year-old from New Hampshire released a game called This Game Costs $200<\/a> earlier this year as a joke–but a lot of people bought it. The game generated $1.3 million in sales, but creator Michael Major didn’t get anywhere near that big of a payday.<\/p>\n

He told WMUR<\/a> that he set the price at $200 because that was the maximum a game could be listed for on Steam, and he expected no one to buy it. When he saw revenue of $1.3 million, he “almost died,” Major said. To be sure, there are games on Steam that cost more than $200–there is a $1,000 game, for example<\/a>.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MlKPZxn7RF4 <\/p>\n

The developer only walked away with $2,000, however, in part because of mass refunds. Major also said it’s curious that the majority of sales came from China.<\/p>\n

“I’m not joking. I have heard of expensive games on Steam being used for money laundering. I have no idea. I could be on a hit list right now,” he said.<\/p>\n

Steam sales data shared in the video showed that the game sold 6,717 units, but 6,707 people got refunds, meaning 99.9% of sales were refunded. The lifetime gross revenue for This Game<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An 18-year-old from New Hampshire released a game called This Game Costs $200 earlier this year as a joke–but a lot of people bought it. The game generated $1.3 million in sales, but creator Michael Major didn’t get anywhere near that big of a payday. He told WMUR that he set the price at $200…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":87009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87007"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87010,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87007\/revisions\/87010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/87009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}