Idle games on Steam have been growing quietly, and new data suggests the genre is now one of the platform’s steadier earners. AppMagic recently published a breakdown of the top 50 Idle games on Steam by revenue from 2024 to 2026, and the numbers make a strong case that the genre has found a comfortable home on PC.

The concept is simple enough: launch a game, leave it running, and check back in when you feel like it. Progress moves on its own. That loop, which traces back to the 2013 browser game Cookie Clicker, has been on Steam for years. What AppMagic’s data shows is just how much ground it has gained recently.

IdleOn leads the pack by a wide margin. The free-to-play MMO-style title from Lavaflame2 brought in over $22 million in 2025 alone and nearly $59 million total. Behind it, Cast n Chill and Spirit City: Lofi Sessions have both crossed $5.3 million. The Farmer Was Replaced, which has players writing code to automate a farm, sits above $4.5 million. Scratch card Clicker Scritchy Scratchy crossed $3 million just months after its March 2026 launch.

On copies sold, desktop companion game Rusty’s Retirement leads paid titles at over 880,000, with The Farmer Was Replaced and Tiny Pasture close behind. Cookie Clicker, despite being over a decade old, has moved around 720,000 copies since arriving on Steam in 2021.

AppMagic tracked across several recent releases shows first-day numbers landing between 40% and 70%, with the expected drop-off after. The Farmer Was Replaced stood out with a Day 30 retention above 10%, which AppMagic describes as unusually high for the genre.

The genre’s current shape on Steam reflects a path that ran through mobile first. By 2022, Idle games were among mobile’s stronger performers, with titles like Gold and Goblins pulling over 69 million downloads. That momentum slowed by mid-2023, partly due to rising user acquisition costs following Apple’s IDFA changes. As mobile growth cooled, similar concepts began appearing on Steam in new forms.

AppMagic groups the current Steam Idle space into a few loose types. Desktop companions like Rusty’s Retirement and Cast n Chill are built to run in the background, something that only works on PC where a spare window or second screen is part of normal computer use. System-driven games like IdleOn and The Farmer Was Replaced go deeper, layering progression until the experience starts to resemble an RPG more than a traditional Idle game. And at the lighter end, games like Bongo Cat, which sits in the taskbar and reacts to keypresses, lean entirely on simplicity and shareability.

Pricing across the genre generally falls between $3 and $15, low enough to reduce hesitation at purchase. Free-to-play titles follow a model closer to mobile, with IdleOn as the clearest proof that it can work on Steam at scale. AppMagic notes that the real competition for these games is not other Idle titles. It is everything else already open on the player’s computer.