A $200 Steam Game Made $1.38 Million. Its Creator Walked Away With $2,045.
A Steam game priced at US$200 generated US$1.38 million in gross revenue in about two weeks — and its creator ended up with roughly US$2,045 after nearly every buyer asked for their money back.
Michael Major released This Game Costs $200 on Steam in July 2025. He set the price at the maximum Steam allows for a game listing, expecting no one to actually buy it. More than 6,700 people did. According to Steam sales data, 6,717 units sold and 6,707 were refunded — a refund rate of 99.9% GameSpot.
Major told GameSpot the majority of sales came from China. He also said he had heard of expensive Steam games being used for money laundering, and joked that he could be on a hit list.
The game itself is a sequel to This Game Costs $10, and its Steam page leans hard into the bit. It describes the title as "the swindle to end all swindles" and a "psychological experience" in which the developer tries to convince players the game truly costs 200 dollars. Players walk around a map set in the world of Schizopia, full of cases of beer and packs of cigarettes, encountering "very sane and normal people" who wander the streets and talk to them. The page lists 10 endings, any of which could be canon, and features a narrator who creates the game as the player plays. There is a Museum of Boring People, which the page says houses the developer's cousin Bill. The developer claims the game is not comedic and is meant to make players cry, referencing a concept called "Schzeebleberries" Steam Store.
Steam does host games priced higher than US$200, including at least one listed at US$1,000, according to GameSpot. But This Game Costs $200 appears to be the one that turned the pricing ceiling into a spectacle.
What makes the story remarkable is the gap between the top-line number and the bottom line. US$1.38 million in gross sales is a figure most independent developers would celebrate. A 99.9% refund rate turns that into a rounding error. Major built a game around the audacity of its own price tag — and the audience that showed up largely treated it as a transaction to be reversed, not a game to be played.
