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Adventure gameplay anchors The Operator, a 2024 release from developer bureau-81. It has 8,312 Steam reviews with 92% positive sentiment, rated Very Positive, and is published by bureau-81 at an initial price of $13.99.
Overview
The Operator is a 2024 Adventure game developed by Bureau 81 and published by Bureau 81. On Steam it has gathered 8,317 player reviews, 92% 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 $14. The pairing of developer Bureau 81 with publisher Bureau 81 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 349,000 to 815,000 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, The Operator can be compared against similar Adventure titles and benchmarked on review counts and estimated sales.
Reviews
8,317
Positive
92%
Steam appid
1771980
Engine
Unknown
Sales estimate
vv1.0349K to 815K
units (median: 582K)
≈ $2.8M to $6.5M net revenue (Steam cut + refunds + regional discount applied)
+ - How is this calculated?
| Factor | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| base | +50 |
| year_2024 | 0 |
| price_$14 | 0 |
| positive_92% | +10 |
| genre_Adventure | +10 |
| final NB | 70 |
Confidence range: median × [0.6, 1.4]. Boundary protection: NB ∈ [15, 150].
Methodology & limitations
Sales estimates use a multi-factor Boxleiter method against public Steam review counts.
They are not authoritative sales data. Actual sales can deviate by
±50% in either direction. Free-to-play games, deeply discounted titles, and games
with heavy bundle distribution have larger error margins. Algorithm version
v1.0.
indielist estimates lifetime unit sales for The Operator at roughly 349,000 to 815,000 copies, with a median around 582,000, derived from its 8,317 Steam reviews using a multi-factor Boxleiter method (version v1.0). That median maps to approximately $4.7M 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
90d · low $8.05Over the last 90 days the price ranged from $8.05 to $13.99, averaging $13.00 across 3 discount windows, with a historical low of $8.05 on 2026-03-19.
Synthetic series for demo. Real ITAD price history loads after Day 3 ingest.
Where to buy
Affiliate disclosure- GOG.com -35%$9.09 Buy
- Steam reference$13.99 Buy
- Humble Store$13.99 Buy
- Green Man Gaming
- Fanatical
Live prices from public feeds, cheapest first. Some are affiliate links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more.
Platforms
linuxmacwindows
Genres
AdventureIndieSimulation
Frequently asked questions
- How many copies has The Operator sold?
- indielist estimates The Operator has sold between 349,314 and 815,066 units (median 582,190), derived from its 8,317 Steam reviews with the white-box Boxleiter vv1.0 method. The full breakdown is shown on the page.
- Who developed The Operator?
- The Operator was developed by Bureau 81 and published by Bureau 81.
- When was The Operator released?
- The Operator was released in 2024.
- How many reviews does The Operator have on Steam?
- The Operator has 8,317 Steam reviews, of which 92% are positive.
Ecosystem
indielist positions The Operator within the Adventure segment so players can surface comparable titles by shared tags and genre rather than by storefront promotion. On the developer side, Bureau 81's other releases and Bureau 81's wider catalog are one click away, letting developers benchmark where The Operator 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 The Operator 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.