- Primary Subject: A viral Steam experiment where a $200 novelty game briefly appeared to generate $1.3M in sales before mass refunds
- Key Idea: Why raw revenue figures can be misleading when refunds, platform fees, and player behavior distort perceived success
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: August 4, 2026
- Quick Answer: The piece argues that the apparent “$1.3 million success” of This Game Costs $200 was never real in practical terms, as mass refunds quickly collapsed the figure into just over $2,000 in actual earnings.
An 18-year-old developer from New Hampshire briefly looked like he'd pulled off one of Steam's strangest overnight success stories.
Earlier this year, Michael Major released This Game Costs $200, a deliberately absurd project priced at Steam's maximum allowed listing price simply because he never expected anyone to actually buy it.
Instead, thousands of people did, pushing the game's gross sales to roughly $1.38 million. The excitement was short-lived - and reality arrived fast.
According to Steam sales data Major shared in an interview with WMUR, the game recorded 6,717 purchases, but 6,707 of those were eventually refunded.
After nearly every sale disappeared, the apparent seven-figure windfall collapsed into just over $2,000 in actual earnings.
Major admitted he "almost died" when he first saw the revenue figure before realizing it was never really his money to begin with.
The story took an even more peculiar turn when Major noticed that most purchases appeared to come from China, with many buyers requesting refunds without ever launching the game.
Major floated a few theories - including the possibility that someone had promoted the game overseas or that it had somehow become caught up in a larger scheme - but he also acknowledged he had no evidence explaining what actually happened.
Until Valve says otherwise (if it ever does), the reason behind the mass purchases remains a mystery.
Why A "$1.3 Million Game" Was Never Really Worth $1.3 Million
Whenever stories like this appear, I always notice how quickly people latch onto the biggest number. "$1.3 million" is the headline because it's shocking, but it also creates an impression that simply isn't true.
Before you even read the article, it's easy to imagine an unknown developer stumbling into instant wealth, only to lose it all through some bizarre twist of fate. That's not really what happened.
What Major experienced is a perfect reminder that gross revenue is one of the most misleading numbers in the games industry. It looks impressive in a headline, but it says very little about what a developer actually earns.
Refunds, platform fees, taxes, regional pricing, payment processing, and countless other factors all stand between a sale appearing on a dashboard and money reaching a developer's bank account.
In this case, refunds were so overwhelming that the original figure became almost meaningless. I'm also not convinced this is a story about Steam's refund policy being broken.
Valve's two-hour refund window exists for a good reason. Players deserve to know whether a game works, performs properly, or simply isn't what they expected.
I'd much rather have a generous refund system than one that traps people into purchases they regret (especially on PC, where hardware compatibility can vary so much). Instead, what intrigues me is how effortlessly numbers can warp our perception of reality.
The leap from "$1.3 million in sales" to just "$2,000 earned" is so absurd that it feels like two entirely different stories.
One sounds like the birth of an indie phenomenon - the other feels like one of Steam's strangest footnotes.
Both are technically accurate, yet only one reflects what actually happened. I think that's something worth remembering whenever impressive sales figures start making the rounds online.
Revenue milestones, wishlist counts, concurrent player records, and download totals all have their place, but none of them automatically tell us whether a game succeeded financially. They're snapshots, not conclusions (and sometimes they're very misleading snapshots).
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