Where can I sell my indie game?

There is almost no public market for a released indie game, yet released games do end up in new hands. Of 4,121 self-published paid indie games launched on Steam from 2020 to 2022, 393 (9.5%) carry a different publisher or developer credit today than they did in a public record from April 2023.

If your game is out and you are wondering whether anyone would take it on, this is where those deals happen, what shape they take, and what you need to have in order first. If you only meant selling copies, that is a store question, and we covered one in getting a released game onto GOG.

The public marketplaces hold almost no released PC games

We looked at the two places a developer is most likely to try.

Flippa is a marketplace for small online businesses. On October 9, 2026, its gaming category showed 59 listings. We read all 59. They were YouTube channels, gaming websites, online stores, mobile apps and browser games. Not one mentioned Steam.

The itch.io community forum has a thread from a buyer looking for a finished or nearly finished game, with source code and rights. It was posted on June 28, 2026 and had 27 replies when we read it. The buyer’s stated budget is “negotiable”.

Seventeen developers offered projects in the replies we could read. Several were prototypes or described as unfinished. Five named a price: $750, €750, $1,500 for three small games together, $4,000, and one that opened at $29,900 and came down to $14,900.

That is the public market. It is thin, much of it is unfinished work, and the prices are for code with no track record attached. If your game has reviews, players and a sales history, this is not where its value shows.

Released games change hands anyway, by private deal

Steam shows who publishes and develops every game. We compared those credits today with a public dataset that recorded them by April 6, 2023, for 5,826 paid indie games launched from 2020 to 2022 with at least 10 reviews in their first year.

In that record, 4,121 of the games were self-published. Today 393 of them, 9.5%, carry a different credit.

1. Same developer, now credits an outside publisher (107 games)2.6%
2. Developer and publisher both under one new name (225)5.5%
3. Developer and publisher both changed, to different names (29)0.7%
4. Developer credit changed only (27)0.7%

Paid indie games launched on Steam 2020 to 2022 with 10+ first-year reviews, self-published in a record made by April 6, 2023. Steam credits read October 9, 2026. Five more games changed in ways that fit no group.

Source: Strike Two analysis of Steam store credits and the FronkonGames Steam Games Dataset

The clearest group is the 107 games, 2.6%, that kept their developer credit and now name a different company as publisher. Somebody took on a game that was already out.

That rate barely moves with the size of the game. It is 2.6% for games with 10 to 99 first-year reviews, 2.6% for 100 to 999, and 2.9% for 1,000 or more. A game did not need to be a hit for someone to take it on.

The largest group, 225 games, now shows one new name as both developer and publisher. We cannot tell these apart from the outside. A studio that renamed itself, a solo developer who formed a company, and a sale to another self-publishing studio all look the same. Valve’s own transfer page gives the second case as a reason transfers exist.

So the honest range is this. 2.6% of self-published games visibly gained an outside publisher after release, and 9.5% is the most these credits can show for games changing hands in any sense.

Games with a publisher move more often, and 1 in 20 came home

The other 1,705 games already had a publisher in the old record. Of those, 398 (23.3%) carry a different credit today.

For 86 of them, 5.0%, the publisher credit now names the developer. On the store page, at least, the game came back. If you signed a deal years ago and wonder whether rights ever return, on Steam’s evidence they did for about 1 game in 20 over three and a half years.

Another 258 changed publisher some other way, most to a different outside company. Read that number with care.

93 of those games moved in blocks of five or more from one publisher name to another, and the two largest blocks hold 25 and 22 games. A block is a publisher that rebranded, or a whole catalogue sold at once. Either way, no single developer went looking for a buyer.

A sale is one of three shapes

When a released game goes to someone else, the deal takes one of three forms.

An outright sale. You assign the copyright, hand over the source and transfer the Steam app. You get paid once and you are done. Every later dollar belongs to the buyer. This is what the public marketplaces offer, and it is why their prices look the way they do.

A publishing or licence deal. You keep ownership. A publisher gets the right to sell the game, for a term the contract sets, and takes a share for the work it does. We broke down how those shares run in what publishers take, and what the work looks like in what a publisher does.

A partnership that continues the game. Someone else funds and builds what comes next, such as updates, ports or the content you never got to, and you share in what it earns.

This is the shape Strike Two works in, so weigh our view of it accordingly. The trade is plain: a share only pays if the next chapter works.

The shapes trade the same two things against each other: money now, and a stake in later. Decide which you need before you talk to anyone.

What a buyer needs you to be able to hand over

Whoever takes the game on will ask the same questions. The answers decide whether a deal closes more often than the price does.

• Who owns it, in writing. In the United States a transfer of copyright ownership is not valid without a signed written document. If a friend drew the art or a contractor wrote the netcode, you need their signed assignment before you can pass the game on.
• What you only license. Unity’s Asset Store licence is “non-exclusive, non-transferable”. Check every asset pack, plugin, font and music track for whether a new owner can keep shipping it.
• Every co-owner agrees. If you made the game with other people, all of them sign.
• The sales history. Expect to be asked what the game has earned, month by month. Steam gives a new owner financial data only from the handover, unless you share the earlier reports.
• The Steam handover itself. Reviews, wishlists and every player’s copy stay with the game. We wrote up the whole process in what happens when a Steam game changes hands.

When selling is the wrong move

The game still earns while you do nothing. In our study of 1,312 indie games with 100 or more first-year reviews, the median game got 47% of its Steam reviews after its first year. A game left on sale costs you nothing. A $1,500 offer for it may be less than it would earn by sitting there.

You might want to come back to it. An outright sale ends that. A licence with an end date does not.

You cannot show clean ownership. Fix the paperwork first, then start the conversation.

You mostly want it to be looked after. That is a publishing or partnership question. Money up front may matter less to you than who takes the game on. Start with whether a released game can still get a publisher.

What to do next

1. Write down what you want: cash now, a share of later, or simply for the game to be in good hands.
2. Gather the proof. Lifetime revenue by month, review count and score, wishlists, and what the last update or sale did.
3. Collect signed assignments from everyone who contributed, and list every licensed asset.
4. Approach people who already work with released games, directly. The data says deals happen. It also says they do not happen on a listing site.
5. Have a lawyer read the agreement before you open Steam’s transfer tool. The tool moves the store page and the payments. The contract moves everything else.

How we measured it

• Games. Every paid indie game (Steam’s Indie tag) launched on Steam from January 2020 to December 2022 with at least 10 Steam-purchase reviews in its first 12 months, the same population as our earlier studies. Of 5,860, 5,826 had a credit in both records.
• The earlier record. The first version of the FronkonGames Steam Games Dataset, uploaded to Hugging Face on April 6, 2023. Each credit was read from Steam on or before that day. The dataset’s December 2023 version shows the same credits for all but 4 of these games, so it had not reread them.
• Today. Steam’s own store records for the same games, read October 9, 2026.
• Matching. Two credits count as the same when the names match after dropping case, punctuation and company words such as “Games”, “Studio” or “Ltd”. Self-published means every publisher credit names a developer of the game.
• Marketplaces. Flippa’s gaming category and the itch.io thread were read on October 9, 2026.
• Limits. A credit is what the store page says, not a contract. A sale that left the credits alone is missed, and a rename with no sale is counted, which is why we give a range. The earlier record has no exact date for each game, so we cannot say when in the three and a half years a change happened. 34 games were missing from one record or the other.