A teen accidentally made $1.4M on Steam – then almost all of it vanished
Easy come, easy go.
Steam logo. Anadolu via Getty Images.
- Teen developer Michael Major briefly earned $1.4 million after his joke Steam game attracted thousands of buyers.
- Refunds erased almost all revenue, leaving Major with about $2,000 from 10 buyers who kept the game.
- Most purchases reportedly came from China, raising questions about social media promotion, refund behavior, or possible misuse of Steam transactions.
- The episode boosted Major’s profile as an indie developer while highlighting risks around high-priced novelty games and refund systems.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
An 18-year-old game developer briefly thought he'd become a millionaire after his $200 joke game generated $1.4 million on Steam. Then the refunds started rolling in.
What do cups of coffee, full-body massages, and luxury mattresses have in common? That’s right – they all have a huge markup price.
Add to the list now also a cheeky PC game charging the maximum price of $200 on the Steam platform.
Eighteen-year-old teen developer Michael Major didn’t expect his This Game Costs $200 project to actually do well, as it was positioned as a joke built on a whimsical premise.
The game is reminiscent of a 16-bit role-playing game, and is actually a sequel to a game Major created a few weeks earlier, named This Game Costs $10.
A few months after the game's launch, Major logged onto Steam and realized This Game Costs $200 had brought in $1.4 million dollars in profit, with the majority of buyers located in China – 6705 of them to be precise.
“I think I almost died,” he told WMUR-TV, bewildered.
A flash in the pan
It was all a case of here today, gone tomorrow. However, as the refund requests piled in. The platform's policy states that a gamer must have played for at least 2 hours in order to be eligible for a refund.
Despite almost all of his revenue being wiped away, Major still managed to turn a profit of $2000, meaning that 10 keen gamers deemed their experience legit enough to stay with the game.
The creator suspects that someone may have promoted the game on social media or through other shady methods:
“I’m not joking, I have heard of expensive games on Steam being used for money-laundering. So, I have no idea – I could be on the hit list right now.”
Another possible explanation could be that punters are trying to accrue Steam points, and the transactional nature of this type of purchase can result in rewards, fuelling the activity of refund mechanics.
One notable element of this experience is that Major has raised his profile as an indie game developer in the process, with one reviewer alleging that the game had 10 different endings, which could also be a case of trolling.
The reviewer was keen to add they would gladly buy Major's next game – “if it was priced lower... MUCH."
