Why 2D Platformers Are a Non-Competitive Genre: An Illustrated Insight into the Niche with Numbers and Graphs

Let's start with some findings on the overall state of the niche:

• in the last five years, 66 premium (non-free-to-play) games with the 2D Platformer tag have earned over a million dollars on Steam;
• in total, during the same period, 2,122 titles on Steam have grossed over a million dollars (across all genres and tags);
• thus, the share of games with the 2D Platformer tag among all "millionaires" over the five-year period is 3.1%;
• looking specifically at the combination of 2D + Platformer, there have been 55 titles with revenue over a million dollars in five years (2.6% of total releases);
• focusing specifically on the year 2026, here's the picture: 1,743 games with the 2D Platformer tag were released, but only five (0.28%) earned more than a million dollars;
• for comparison, a total of 227 titles have been released with a box office of over a million dollars in 2026 so far — 1.2% of all releases;
• games with the 2D Platformer tag account for 9.5% of all Steam releases in 2026, yet only 2.2% of them made it to the "millionaires" list;
• for the entire year of 2025, the situation was similar: 429 games have earned over a million dollars so far (2.1% of the total number of releases), with only 11 of them tagged as 2D Platformer.

Before moving on to a more detailed analysis of the data and the main conclusions about how dead the 2D platformer market is, let’s remind you of our previous reports analyzing other game genres and categories.

Adult Games | RTS | Racing | Checklist Simulators | Idle Games | Economic Strategies | RPGs in the spirit of Disco Elysium | Action RPGs | Souls-like

How Bad Is It in the 2D Platformer Segment: Benchmark of the Niche