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Prison Architect

Oct 6, 2015 Indie $29.99
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This simulation strategy game, released in 2015, tasks players with building and managing a maximum-security prison. It has garnered 59,709 reviews on Steam. The developer attribution is unknown.

Overview

Prison Architect is a 2015 Indie game developed by Introversion Software and published by Paradox Interactive. On Steam it has gathered 59,960 player reviews, 89% of them positive, which counts as a very positive reception among indie titles in the Indie category. The game is available on linux, mac, windows, and launched at $30. The pairing of developer Introversion Software with publisher Paradox Interactive is one of the studio-publisher relationships indielist tracks, letting players find comparable games and letting developers and investors study how Indie projects reach the market. indielist's white-box method estimates its lifetime sales at roughly 3.4 million to 8.0 million 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, Prison Architect can be compared against similar Indie titles and benchmarked on review counts and estimated sales.

Reviews

59,960

Positive

89%

Steam appid

233450

Engine

Unknown

Players (snapshot)

1,083

Historical snapshot ·

Sales estimate

v1.0

3.4M to 8.0M

units (median: 5.7M)

≈ $58.5M to $136.6M modeled net revenue (fixed store-cut, refund, and regional-price assumptions applied)

3.4M median 8.0M
+ How is this calculated?
59,960 reviews × NB(95) = 5,696,200 median units
Factor Adjustment
base +50
year_2015 +30
price_$30 +5
positive_89% +10
final NB 95

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 Prison Architect at roughly 3.4 million to 8.0 million copies, with a median around 5.7 million, derived from its 59,960 Steam reviews using a multi-factor Boxleiter method (version v1.0). That median maps to approximately $97.6M 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

54 observed days · window low $6.60

Across 54 observed UTC days from 2026-05-31 to 2026-07-24, the daily lowest tracked USD price across stores ranged from $6.60 to $25.95. The tracked-window low was $6.60 on 2026-05-31.

$5 $17 $29 05-3106-1106-2107-0207-1207-24 2026-05-31: $6.60 2026-06-01: $6.60 2026-06-02: $6.60 2026-06-03: $6.60 2026-06-04: $6.60 2026-06-05: $6.60 2026-06-06: $6.60 2026-06-07: $25.91 2026-06-08: $25.94 2026-06-09: $25.95 2026-06-10: $7.49 2026-06-11: $7.49 2026-06-12: $7.49 2026-06-13: $7.49 2026-06-14: $7.49 2026-06-15: $7.49 2026-06-16: $7.49 2026-06-17: $7.49 2026-06-18: $7.49 2026-06-19: $7.49 2026-06-20: $7.49 2026-06-21: $7.49 2026-06-22: $7.49 2026-06-23: $7.49 2026-06-24: $7.49 2026-06-25: $7.49 2026-06-26: $6.75 2026-06-27: $6.60 2026-06-28: $6.60 2026-06-29: $6.60 2026-06-30: $6.75 2026-07-01: $6.75 2026-07-02: $6.75 2026-07-03: $6.75 2026-07-04: $6.75 2026-07-05: $6.75 2026-07-06: $6.75 2026-07-07: $6.60 2026-07-08: $6.60 2026-07-09: $6.60 2026-07-10: $6.60 2026-07-11: $6.60 2026-07-12: $6.60 2026-07-13: $6.60 2026-07-14: $6.75 2026-07-15: $6.75 2026-07-16: $6.75 2026-07-17: $7.49 2026-07-18: $7.49 2026-07-19: $7.49 2026-07-20: $7.49 2026-07-21: $6.68 2026-07-22: $6.68 2026-07-24: $6.68 2026-05-31: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-06-01: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-06-02: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-06-03: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-06-04: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-06-05: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-06-06: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-06-07: $25.91 2026-06-08: $25.94 2026-06-09: $25.95 2026-06-10: $7.49 2026-06-11: $7.49 2026-06-12: $7.49 2026-06-13: $7.49 2026-06-14: $7.49 2026-06-15: $7.49 2026-06-16: $7.49 2026-06-17: $7.49 2026-06-18: $7.49 2026-06-19: $7.49 2026-06-20: $7.49 2026-06-21: $7.49 2026-06-22: $7.49 2026-06-23: $7.49 2026-06-24: $7.49 2026-06-25: $7.49 2026-06-26: $6.75 2026-06-27: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-06-28: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-06-29: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-06-30: $6.75 2026-07-01: $6.75 2026-07-02: $6.75 2026-07-03: $6.75 2026-07-04: $6.75 2026-07-05: $6.75 2026-07-06: $6.75 2026-07-07: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-07-08: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-07-09: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-07-10: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-07-11: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-07-12: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-07-13: $6.60 (tracked-window low) 2026-07-14: $6.75 2026-07-15: $6.75 2026-07-16: $6.75 2026-07-17: $7.49 2026-07-18: $7.49 2026-07-19: $7.49 2026-07-20: $7.49 2026-07-21: $6.68 2026-07-22: $6.68 2026-07-24: $6.68 Tracked-window low: $6.60 on 2026-05-31

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

Where to buy

Affiliate disclosure
  • Humble Store -78%
    $6.68 Buy
  • Green Man Gaming -75%
    $7.49 Buy
  • GOG.com -75%
    $7.49 Buy
  • Fanatical -10%
    $25.60 Buy
  • Steam reference
    $29.99 Buy

Latest tracked store observations (2026-07-24 04:43 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

Tags

SimulationBuildingSandboxBase-BuildingColony SimStrategyManagementCity Builder2DTop-DownMultiplayerResource ManagementEconomySingleplayerModdableCapitalismFunnyReplay ValueIndieCasual

Frequently asked questions

How many copies has Prison Architect sold?
indielist estimates Prison Architect has sold between 3,417,720 and 7,974,680 units (median 5,696,200), derived from its 59,960 Steam reviews with the white-box Boxleiter v1.0 method. The full breakdown is shown on the page.
Who developed Prison Architect?
Prison Architect was developed by Introversion Software and published by Paradox Interactive.
Who published Prison Architect?
Prison Architect was published by Paradox Interactive, developed by Introversion Software. See Paradox Interactive's full catalogue and submission status on indielist.
When was Prison Architect released?
Prison Architect was released in 2015.
How many reviews does Prison Architect have on Steam?
Prison Architect has 59,960 Steam reviews, of which 89% are positive.
Is Prison Architect worth playing?
Steam players rate Prison Architect 89% positive across 59,960 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.

Ecosystem

Players looking for games like Prison Architect can compare it on indielist against semantically similar Indie titles such as Going Medieval, Factory Town, RimWorld, Oxygen Not Included, ranked by shared tags and genre rather than by ad spend. On the developer side, Introversion Software's other releases and Paradox Interactive's wider catalog are one click away, letting developers benchmark where Prison Architect 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 Prison Architect page serves three audiences at once: players hunting their next Indie 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.

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