Is 2D Pixel Art a Safe Bet? (Part 1)
Author: Ross Burton, PhD, Head of Product and Data
Category: Data Analysis
Published: 1/20/2025
Updated: 8/23/2025
What Makes 2D Pixel Art So Appealing?
The economy is uncertain right now and game development costs are more important than ever. Publishers are becoming more risk averse and are less likely to take a chance on a new IP 1. There is also a growing feeling that smaller and more manageable games should be the focus in the short term. It is certainly the consensus that for new indie developers, or those looking to build up experience, should be adopting this mindset 2.
So when it comes to keeping it small and tight on budget, one of the first things that comes to mind is a 2D pixel art game. Pixel art games typically require simpler assets and shorter development cycles, especially compared to visually complex 3D games. Basic pixel art has a lower barrier to entry, allowing developers to create functional assets quickly 4 and if done right, it also adds a nostalgic retro feel to the game that can be appealing to certain audiences.
Despite this, there are arguments that the pixel art market is over saturated, meaning it can be difficult to stand out. Also many players associate pixel art with cheaper or simpler games, potentially affecting perceived value 5. So is 2D pixel art a safe bet for indie developers and small teams? Or is the 2D pixel art market a hostile environment when looking for quick wins or a stepping stone into the game development world?
In this two-part Deep Dive series, we will explore the current state of the 2D pixel art market on Steam and try to answer these questions. Most of all, we try and manage expectations and provide a realistic view of the market for a potential 2D pixel art release.
How Have 2D Pixel Art Games Performed Recently?
The claims that the market is over saturated are not unfounded. If we look at the graph below we can clearly see an enormous uptick in the number of 2D pixel art games released on Steam since 2020 (we all remember that year right) and more recently that trend has begun to accelerate. The graph also shows the average SteamDB score over time, a rating system that accounts for the proportion of positive reviews alongside the number of reviews received.
On the face of things it appears as if the quality and performance of such games has also taken a bit of a nose dive, but it’s important to stress that comparing the market to pre-2017 is a bit misleading, given the introduction of Steam Direct which made it easier for developers to release games on the platform. Also, the sheer number of releases since 2020 dramatically increases the sample size, which improves the accuracy of the average score. With that said it seems more likely the performance of these games has plateaued rather than declined.

The number of releases in the 2D pixel art space has increased over time (top) and the performance in terms of SteamDB score has plateaued (bottom).
For the remainder of this analysis we’re going to focus on those games released after 2023, as we believe this will give us the most accurate representation of the current market; investment into the industry and consumer spending have slowed significantly in this period, compared to the rapid growth seen in the years prior 6. We’ll review this section of the market from a wider perspective in the remainder of this article, and then in part 2 we’ll break down some titles released in this period to see if we can identify any specific patterns or trends.
The Chances of Success
So you’re developing a 2D pixel art game and you’re looking to release on Steam. What are your chances of success if we look at 2D pixel art releases since 2023? In the tables below, we see the percentage of games that have reached a sales milestone broken down by the age of each game (because there will be some games that have had more time to reach these milestones than others). So we have a benchmark for comparison, we’ve also included a table of statistics for the same milestones for all other games released on Steam since 2023.
Starting with 2D pixel art games released in or after 2023, here are the percentage of titles that have reached a sales milestone:
Age | % > 100 copies | % > 1,000 copies | % > 10,000 copies | % > 100,000 copies | % > 1,000,000 copies | Total Games |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
0-6 Months | 67.3 | 26.1 | 7.5 | 1.3 | 0.08 | 1140 |
6-12 Months | 72.5 | 29.9 | 7.2 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 1052 |
12+ Months | 76.1 | 33.6 | 9.6 | 2.2 | 0.23 | 1754 |
And here are the same statistics for games other than 2D pixel art released in or after 2023:
Age | % > 100 copies | % > 1,000 copies | % > 10,000 copies | % > 10,000 copies | % > 1,000,000 copies | Total Games |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
0-6 Months | 67.3 | 28.8 | 8.0 | 2.1 | 0.6 | 6108 |
6-12 Months | 74.8 | 33.0 | 10.4 | 2.7 | 0.7 | 5666 |
12+ Months | 77.7 | 36.3 | 11.6 | 3.0 | 0.9 | 9085 |
What is immediately obvious is that if you’re new to game development and want an entry point with some return on investment, 2D pixel art games are a good bet if you have realistic expectations. There is ~70% chance you will sell over 100 copies of your game and ~30% chance that you will sell over 1000 copies, and these statistics are comparable to games in other categories.
This might not seem like much and it certainly will not pay the rent, but compared to the other categories such as 3D games, there might be a significantly lower upfront investment in time and resources. Additionally, if you’re only just starting out your game development journey and you can manage the scope of your game to keep the development time short, it can be a good stepping stone to build up experience and a portfolio whilst enjoying some monetary return; framing is everything here, think of it as your game development internship.
For those solo indie developers who have a bit more experience under their belt, or small teams, the risks might be slightly higher. We see that around 10% of games from other categories sell over 10,000 copies compared to 7-9.6% for 2D pixel art games. The number of games selling in excess of 100,000 copies is also lower for 2D pixel art games. So you need to think carefully about the scope of your game and whether the reduced costs of development justifies the potential risk of lower returns.
Finally, you might wonder whether the chances of selling over 1,000,000 copies of a game are solely dependent on being a AAA studio or having the backing of a publisher. However, we found that removing AAA’s from the 2D pixel art category barely moves the dial. Having a publisher backing did have an impact though - when removing games with publishers from the 2D pixel art category, the percentage of games selling over 1,000,000 copies dropped to 0% for games less than 12 months old.
Market Saturation or an Abundance of Low Quality Games?
So what are the drivers behind the performance of 2D pixel art games? Is it simply a case of the market being over saturated with low quality games? Or are there other factors at play? If we look at the graphs below of estimated copies sold versus saturation score - metrics that measure how many similar games exist in the immediate Steam market space around a game - we can see that market saturation alone does not explain the performance of these games. There are games that have performed well despite high saturation scores, and games that have performed poorly despite low saturation scores.

There is no correlation between estimated copies sold and saturation score; at the top we see a cloud of data points on a scatter plot and on the bottom the density plot shows the majority of games sell less than 1,000 copies but market saturation is fairly evenly distributed regardless of earnings.
Interestingly, if you’re to believe review data on Steam, quality does not seem to be a significant factor either. In the graphs below we can see estimated revenue versus the percentage of positive reviews. We have deliberately only included games with at least 100 reviews to ensure that a reliable sample size is available.
It is clear that some games have overwhelmingly positive reviews but have not performed well in terms of revenue. There are, however, very few games with high sales estimates that have a low percentage of positive reviews, which suggests that quality is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for success.
We will caveat these findings with a warning that review data is not always reliable and can be influenced by complex biases or even manipulated by review bombing, so take these findings with a pinch of salt.

The scatter plot at the top shows the majority of games congregate around 1,000 copies sold and on average most games received good reviews; this is made clearer by the darker areas in the density plot (bottom). Whilst a strong correlation between % positive reviews and sales is not apparent, the variance in the % positive reviews clearly decreases as sales increase i.e. there are less poorly rated games in the higher sales bracket.
Experience Counts
One critical finding was the power of experience in this space; although this should not be surprising to anyone and is something we have spoken about before. Nevertheless, it is important to drive home the power of perseverance and experience in this space. Developers that have published before on average sell twice as many games as those that have not (~18,000 copies compared to ~9,500). We have broken this down further in the table below by the chance of reaching significant sales milestones for developers with and without previous experience within this cohort of 2D pixel art games released in or after 2023:
Sales Milestone | % w/ No Prior Games on Steam | % w/ Previous Steam Titles |
---|---|---|
> 100 | 70.4 | 78.7 |
> 1,000 | 25.5 | 43.0 |
> 10,000 | 6.2 | 13.8 |
> 100,000 | 1.0 | 3.3 |
> 1,000,000 | 0.2 | 0.08 |
As you can see the chances of at least selling 100 copies increases by 8%, but a more impressive observation is that the chance of selling 1,000 or even 10,000 copies almost doubles. So as with any endeavour, experience does pay off in the long run.
Patterns in the Market
Finally, we did some keyword and topic analysis using all the available text data associated with a game’s Steam store page i.e. the tags, genres, categories and descriptions. Starting simple, we looked at term frequency - how often do tags and genres show up in each revenue category and do these frequencies differ based on revenue? Terms like “RPG”, “Story”, “Co-op”, and “Open-World” were found to have a small impact on revenue, but the results were not convincing.
Not satisfied, we moved on to more complex analysis using machine learning algorithms. We used topic modelling to try and identify complex patterns in the descriptions of games; are there common themes or descriptions, like story arcs or specific game mechanics, that correlate with higher revenue? Unfortunately, the results were inconclusive - you can pretty much pick any topic or genre and you’ll find an example of where it performed well and where it didn’t. To demonstrate the point, you can see the results of one such topic model below:

Each data point in this scatter plot is a game coloured by whether the game sold more than 1,000 copies. The proximity of data points to each other tells you 'how many topics/themes they share'. If there was more profitable topics (for example sci-fi themes, wizards, warfare, complex crime narratives) then we would expect those games that exceeded 1,000 copies sold to form clusters, but no such pattern is visible.
The above plot is complex, but basically the position of each point tells you how similar the games are based on the frequency of 20 identified topics; topics can be summarised by their high frequency keywords and included things like “jump arcade platformer precision climb”, “minesweeper defence defenders stronghold”, and “horror story endings strange mystery”. The data points in red are those which sold over 1,000 copies to date (we chose this threshold because there are enough examples to reliably visualise any pattern). As you can see, there are no distinct ‘clusters’ of high performing games, meaning that it’s not the topic or genre that is driving revenue for 2D pixel art games.
The take away here is, there is no silver bullet when it comes to “what” your game is about, the “genre” it fits into, or the “story” it tells. Jumping on trends or trying to emulate the success of others is not an instant ticket to success. Instead, focus on the quality of your game and the experience you bring to the table. But most importantly, manage your expectations and understand that the market is tough and that success is dependent on a multitude of factors which we will discuss in part 2 of this deep dive.
TLDR; the key takeaways from Part 1
- 2D pixel art games are a good bet for new developers or those looking to build up experience, with a ~70% chance of selling over 100 copies and ~30% chance of selling over 1,000 copies.
- For solo indie developers or small teams, the risks might be slightly higher with a lower chance of selling over 10,000 or 100,000 copies compared to other categories.
- Experience counts; developers that have published before on average earn twice as much as those that have not.
- Market saturation and quality do not explain the performance of 2D pixel art games, with some games performing well despite high saturation scores and games with overwhelmingly positive reviews performing poorly in terms of revenue.
- There is no silver bullet when it comes to “what” your game is about, the “genre” it fits into, or the “story” it tells. Focus on the quality of your game and the unique experience you bring to the table.
See you in part 2 where we dissect some specific games and try to identify what makes them successful or not, thinking not just about the game itself but also the marketing and community building that goes into a successful release.
References
- Games Industry.biz | More AI, fewer risky bets, and finding footing in a changing industry: 2024 predictions
- YouTube | Thomas Brush
- EJAW | 2D Vs 3D Games: Differences, Benefits, And Costs
- Reddit | Is pixel art considered "cheaper" by the average/casual gamer?
- YouTube | The Problem With Pixel Art
- Matthew Ball | The State of Gaming 2025