Valve today announced the top 20 best selling games on Steam released in March. And coming as little surprise to anyone, Half-Life: Alyx (2020) has made it on the list.

In its monthly top sales list, Valve is accounting for two weeks of sales, which helps put Half-Life: Alyx on more equal footing with the rest of the games released during the entire month of March. However you slice it, making the top 20 on Steam is an achievement for any title, let alone a VR game.

You’ll see plenty of familiar faces below, including Borderlands 3, DOOM Eternal, and Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. Valve has organized the list according to release date, and not overall revenue as such, so it’s hard to tell where it fits on the list.

That said, on launch day Half-Life: Alyx broke the record for peak concurrent usership of a VR game on Steam at 42,858 players, putting it head and shoulders above the competition for top concurrent users, multiplayer games included.

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Valve Explains the Deceptively Simple Design Process That Made 'Half-Life: Alyx' Excellent

Although Valve hasn’t released official numbers on how many copies it’s sold to date, SteamSpy estimates there are currently between 500,000 – 1,000,000 owners, putting the game’s revenue at around $25 – $50 million should those numbers at all reflect reality. Even at half that estimation, Half-Life: Alyx is well positioned to be the best selling VR game to date.

March’s Steam Top 20 List

  • Black Mesa – Crowbar Collective
  • Yes, Your Grace – Brave At Night
  • Avorion – Boxelware
  • Ori and the Will of the Wisps – Moon Studios & Xbox Game Studios
  • DJMAX RESPECT V – NEOWIZ
  • Borderlands 3 – Gearbox Software
  • Granblue Fantasy: Versus – Cygames, Inc. & Arc System Works
  • State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition – Undead Labs & Xbox Game Studios
  • AI＊Shoujo/AI＊少女 – ILLUSION
  • DOOM Eternal – id Software
  • Panzer Corps 2 – Flashback Games
  • Half-Life: Alyx – Valve
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III – Nihon Falcom, Engine Software & PH3
  • Bright Memory – FYQD-Studio
  • Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms – Codename Entertainment
  • Last Oasis – Donkey Crew
  • ONE PIECE: PIRATE WARRIORS 4 – Koei Tecmo
  • One Step From Eden – Thomas Moon Kang
  • Biped – NEXT Studios
  • Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord – TaleWorlds Entertainment
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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Andrew Jakobs

    But is that number including the copies that were provided with the headsets for free..

    • benz145

      I doubted the counted copies that were given away as sales revenue when figuring this list.

      • Adam Broadhurst

        It’s possible they were included same as the Wii Sports,Wii Fit,Mario Kart Wii bundled sales(practically all of them)are counted as ‘sold copies’.

        • kuhpunkt

          But those don’t generate extra revenue.

          • mirak

            People bought the system because of the game, so of course they generate revenue.

          • kuhpunkt

            But they bought the Index, not the game. The game is part of the Index package.

          • mirak

            Not for people who were incentived to bought the index because alyx was annonced.

            What you say is like saying a salesman works for free because you only pay the product that he sells.

          • kuhpunkt

            The reason behind it doesn’t change the revenue. Alyx is part of the $1000 package. That’s what the argument is behind…

          • mirak

            The point is how much a VR game can make.

            It doesn’t mater if it was given to index owners before or after they new Alyx existed.

            You now almost everyone will buy it anyway.

          • kuhpunkt

            That has nothing to do with the question at hand. Alyx didn’t create revenue when it was given out for free with Index hardware. Therefore it doesn’t count here.

          • mirak

            You still totally miss the point, which is that Alyx shows a good VR game can sell a lot of copies and make enough money even for big studios.

            At least on a given month …

          • kuhpunkt

            But that’s not what the conversation was about. It was whether the free copies of Alyx are being counted as units sold or not.

    • kuhpunkt

      Highly doubt it.

  • Covid affecting game sales by hampering supply lines of VR devices.

    Ah well

  • NooYawker

    I haven’t heard of 2/3 of the games listed.

  • The best Chapter, IMHO

    • brandon9271

      The HL series has always had a horror element but I have to say, in VR it’s greatly amplified! lol The start of the subway chapter was a bit unnerving but Chapter 7 cranks it up a notch. I think this game is a shining example of what VR is supposed to be and the people who want to play this game in 2d with a keyboard are doing themselves a HUGE disservice. It’s like waiting years for your favorite film to release and then instead of going to the theater, you choose to watch a cam bootleg on your cell phone.

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    • kuhpunkt

      I love it, but I hate it for one reason: there’s no in-universe reason why you can’t just kill him or blow him up with a few grenades. He’s not armored or anything.

      • Nilok

        Have you seen what he did to that Headcrab? He didn’t just it eat, he drank it in seconds. I have no idea if he is flora or fauna, so I don’t think there is a “weak point” to damage.

        • kuhpunkt

          He’s a mutated person. No matter if he’s flora or fauna, a grenade should harm him. He doesn’t have armor like those headcrabs.

          • Nilok

            Deal damage and harm are two different things. The head is completely split open and only resembles the human head it once was. There is no brain in there anymore, not like we know. The body has more in common with the Zen flora, which even the Combine was having trouble trying to contain the flora, let alone it literally walking around.

            If the combine have such difficulty with stationary, passive Zen flora, how much harder would it be to kill mobile, aggressive Zen flora?

          • kuhpunkt

            2 grenades and 100 bullets should do it.

          • Nilok

            Well, that was a waste of time, I basically dumped all my ammo into the Zen flora that covered a body and a couch and it did jack. No wonder the aliens in Zen grew it into fortresses and other immovable structures as seen in Half Life 1.

          • kuhpunkt

            What?

          • Nilok

            I went into Half Life Alyx, and tried to deal damage to Zen flora. It makes sense that conventional weapons don’t deal damage, as the Combine have to you Antlion… something… in order to break it down.

            In the original Half Life, all the Zen alien structures, machines, fortresses, and maybe even their armor are made of the same biological material that is in the quarantine zone. It makes sense that Jeff is a tank.

          • kuhpunkt

            Because the Zen flora aren’t enemies. They aren’t made to be killed.

          • Nilok

            Or, if you read the rest of my post, the Xen flora is also used as armor, building material, and fortifications. It is both load bearing and extremely tough, able to resist RPGs. That is why the Combine can’t just blow it up themselves and have to use a biological agent to remove it. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae36c922a333d5cdbcf0a5e178111b43806b05d5bc7c6998ced0cc3b656ca4d7.jpg

          • kuhpunkt

            It’s still a living, breathing organism. Can’t tell me you couldn’t be able to kill Jeff.

          • Nilok

            Oh, you can kill Jeff, but to do so you needed an industrial scrap compactor, which can generator 70-125+ tons of force.

            A normal grenade, assuming that it is set off at point blank range, hitting the entire core body and head, will generate 6 tons of force. The trauma caused is off by a factor of 10.

            The stuff from Xen is living, but like anything found on Earth, it is literally grown into massive structures. Remember, this is the same stuff that took literally getting hit by a giant rocket engine to get killed in Half Life 1.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9bfe5fbb2a5fb29f6ee9218127079961df7c8bb83e34206a29c233f661b694a8.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb8104a94d3718a079ab7594c62ffbd23a4352c4f7d56619189640e83b78fe16.jpg

            Assuming that rocket is at least similar to the Space Shuttle’s engines, that thing is puts out 187.5 tons of force at 5,800 °F.

            I’m not sure how I can make this much clearer. Xen flora is stupidly durable for being biological.

          • kuhpunkt

            You’re durable!

          • Nilok

            Thanks Matt.

  • Hey Scott, have a look at SuperData’s just released estimates. They say the revenue of the game is around 40M and it is the 8th most grossing PC game in 2020 :O. These are quite huge results

  • Greyl

    Lol, it’s so crazy to see an IllusionSoft game make Steam’s top 10. Which, if you don’t know, their games are literally hardcore hentai porn games. And they typically have a VR modding scene around them, too.