Study Finds DLC Release Doubles Base Game Sales on Steam
The study provides the first large-scale empirical evidence that DLC releases create a virtuous cycle of increased sales, engagement, and developer maintenance, challenging the notion that DLC merely cannibalizes base game revenue.
Reporting from 1 sources: Automaton.
A study by University of California, Berkeley researchers found that releasing DLC on Steam roughly doubles base game sales over the following month, increases active users by up to 72.8%, and raises the probability of developer update announcements by 11.4 percentage points. The paper analyzed data from January 2023 to September 2024.
The paper, led by Zi Yang Chen of UC Berkeley and published June 3, examined daily data from Steam's public API and Gamalytic for the top 10,000 paid games and roughly 22,000 DLCs. The researchers compared 179 games that released DLC against 1,233 similar games that did not, using a two-way fixed effects model to isolate the DLC effect. They found base game sales peaked at 3.48 times the baseline two days after a DLC release, settling to an average 103% increase over 30 days. Daily active users rose 64.7% to 72.8%, and review counts increased 44.1% to 50.1%. The probability of developers posting bug-fix or improvement updates rose by 11.4 percentage points. Free DLC showed a sales bump only in the first week, with no significant 30-day effect and a decrease in update announcements.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.