How many copies has Death and Taxes sold?

indielist estimates Death and Taxes has sold between 395,658 and 923,202 units (median 659,430), derived from its 7,758 Steam reviews with the white-box Boxleiter v1.0 method. The full breakdown is shown on the page.

Who published Death and Taxes?

Death and Taxes was published by Placeholder Gameworks, developed by Placeholder Gameworks. See Placeholder Gameworks's full catalogue and submission status on indielist.

When was Death and Taxes released?

Death and Taxes was released in 2020.

How many reviews does Death and Taxes have on Steam?

Death and Taxes has 7,758 Steam reviews, of which 86% are positive.

Is Death and Taxes worth playing?

Steam players rate Death and Taxes 86% positive across 7,758 reviews. indielist doesn't score games editorially; it surfaces public review sentiment and a white-box sales estimate so you can judge reception and reach yourself.

Death and Taxes

Feb 20, 2020 Adventure $12.99

Developer Placeholder Gameworks Publisher Placeholder Gameworks

Profile updated Jun 2026

This point-and-click adventure simulation, released in 2020, puts players in the role of a grim reaper. With 8,309 Steam reviews at an 86% positive rating, it's a story-rich experience from placeholder-gameworks, who also self-published. Choices matter and lead to multiple endings.

Death and Taxes is a 2020 Adventure game developed by Placeholder Gameworks and published by Placeholder Gameworks. On Steam it has gathered 7,758 player reviews, 86% of them positive, which counts as a very positive reception among indie titles in the Adventure category. The game is available on linux, mac, windows, and launched at $13. The pairing of developer Placeholder Gameworks with publisher Placeholder Gameworks is one of the studio-publisher relationships indielist tracks, letting players find comparable games and letting developers and investors study how Adventure projects reach the market. indielist's white-box method estimates its lifetime sales at roughly 396,000 to 923,000 units, with the full Boxleiter factor breakdown shown on this page rather than a single black-box figure. Within indielist's catalog of indie games mapped to their studios, publishers, and funding, Death and Taxes can be compared against similar Adventure titles and benchmarked on review counts and estimated sales.

Reviews

7,758

Positive

86%

Steam appid

1166290

Engine

Unknown

Players (snapshot)

Unavailable

Sales estimate

v1.0

396K to 923K

units (median: 659K)

≈ $2.9M to $6.9M modeled net revenue (fixed store-cut, refund, and regional-price assumptions applied)

396K median 923K

+ How is this calculated?

7,758 reviews × NB(85) = 659,430 median units

Factor	Adjustment
base	+50
year_2020	+15
price_$13	0
positive_86%	+10
genre_Adventure	+10
final NB	85

Heuristic display range: median × [0.6, 1.4]. Boundary protection: NB ∈ [15, 150].

Methodology & limitations

Sales estimates use an additive Boxleiter-derived heuristic against public Steam review counts. They are not authoritative sales data, and the fixed display range is not a statistically validated confidence interval. Actual results may fall outside it, especially for deeply discounted or bundle-heavy titles. Algorithm version v1.0. Read the exact method and validation status.

indielist estimates lifetime unit sales for Death and Taxes at roughly 396,000 to 923,000 copies, with a median around 659,000, derived from its 7,758 Steam reviews using a multi-factor Boxleiter method (version v1.0). That median maps to approximately $4.9M in net revenue after Steam's 30% cut, regional pricing, and refunds. Unlike black-box trackers, the full calculation is shown on this page: a base review-to-sales multiplier is adjusted for release year, launch price, review sentiment, studio size, and genre, and every adjustment is listed so developers, publishers, and investors can audit exactly how the figure was reached. The range itself reflects genuine uncertainty — review-to-sales ratios vary widely between games — so indielist publishes a low, median, and high band rather than a false-precision single number, and treats free-to-play, heavily discounted, and bundle-distributed titles as having wider error margins still.

Price history

51 observed days · window low $1.68

Across 51 observed UTC days from 2026-06-03 to 2026-07-24, the daily lowest tracked USD price across stores ranged from $1.68 to $1.69. The tracked-window low was $1.68 on 2026-06-03.

Real store observations · daily lowest tracked USD price across stores · missing days are not filled.

Where to buy

Affiliate disclosure

GOG.com -87%

$1.69 Buy
Steam reference

$12.99 Buy
Green Man Gaming

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Fanatical

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Humble Store

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Latest tracked store observations (2026-07-24 05:48 UTC), cheapest first. Prices may have changed since observation. Some are affiliate links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more.

Platforms

linuxmacwindows

Frequently asked questions

How many copies has Death and Taxes sold?: indielist estimates Death and Taxes has sold between 395,658 and 923,202 units (median 659,430), derived from its 7,758 Steam reviews with the white-box Boxleiter v1.0 method. The full breakdown is shown on the page.
Who developed Death and Taxes?: Death and Taxes was developed by Placeholder Gameworks and published by Placeholder Gameworks.
Who published Death and Taxes?: Death and Taxes was published by Placeholder Gameworks, developed by Placeholder Gameworks. See Placeholder Gameworks's full catalogue and submission status on indielist.
When was Death and Taxes released?: Death and Taxes was released in 2020.
How many reviews does Death and Taxes have on Steam?: Death and Taxes has 7,758 Steam reviews, of which 86% are positive.
Is Death and Taxes worth playing?: Steam players rate Death and Taxes 86% positive across 7,758 reviews. indielist doesn't score games editorially; it surfaces public review sentiment and a white-box sales estimate so you can judge reception and reach yourself.

Players looking for games like Death and Taxes can compare it on indielist against semantically similar Adventure titles such as Papers, Please, Beholder: Conductor, The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, Not For Broadcast, ranked by shared tags and genre rather than by ad spend. On the developer side, Placeholder Gameworks's other releases and Placeholder Gameworks's wider catalog are one click away, letting developers benchmark where Death and Taxes sits among a studio's body of work and how its publisher's portfolio performs. Because indielist maps studios, publishers, games, and funding into one connected graph, the same Death and Taxes page serves three audiences at once: players hunting their next Adventure game, developers studying how comparable projects were positioned and what they sold, and investors tracing which teams and labels are active in the space. A machine-readable markdown mirror of this page is published at the same path with a .md suffix for AI assistants, and its review, price, and sales-estimate figures are refreshed on a schedule rather than frozen at launch.

Matched from shared Steam tags and primary genre. Review count breaks ties; it is not a personal recommendation score.