How many copies has Papers, Please sold?

indielist estimates Papers, Please has sold between 4,547,916 and 10,611,804 units (median 7,579,860), derived from its 79,788 Steam reviews with the white-box Boxleiter v1.0 method. The full breakdown is shown on the page.

Who developed Papers, Please?

Papers, Please was developed by Lucas Pope and published by 3909.

Who published Papers, Please?

Papers, Please was published by 3909, developed by Lucas Pope. See 3909's full catalogue and submission status on indielist.

When was Papers, Please released?

Papers, Please was released in 2013.

How many reviews does Papers, Please have on Steam?

Papers, Please has 79,788 Steam reviews, of which 97% are positive.

Is Papers, Please worth playing?

Steam players rate Papers, Please 97% positive across 79,788 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.

Papers, Please

Aug 8, 2013 Adventure $9.99

Developer Lucas Pope Publisher 3909

Profile updated May 2026

Papers, Please is an adventure game released in 2013. It has garnered 71,891 reviews on Steam. The developer is unknown.

Papers, Please is a 2013 Adventure game developed by Lucas Pope and published by 3909. On Steam it has gathered 79,788 player reviews, 97% of them positive, which counts as a overwhelmingly positive reception among indie titles in the Adventure category. The game is available on linux, mac, windows, and launched at $10. The pairing of developer Lucas Pope with publisher 3909 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 4.5 million to 10.6 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, Papers, Please can be compared against similar Adventure titles and benchmarked on review counts and estimated sales.

Reviews

79,788

Positive

97%

Steam appid

239030

Engine

Unknown

Players (snapshot)

896

Historical snapshot · 2026-07-05 20:15 UTC

Sales estimate

v1.0

4.5M to 10.6M

units (median: 7.6M)

≈ $26.0M to $60.6M modeled net revenue (fixed store-cut, refund, and regional-price assumptions applied)

4.5M median 10.6M

+ How is this calculated?

79,788 reviews × NB(95) = 7,579,860 median units

Factor	Adjustment
base	+50
year_2013	+30
price_$10	-5
positive_97%	+10
genre_Adventure	+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 Papers, Please at roughly 4.5 million to 10.6 million copies, with a median around 7.6 million, derived from its 79,788 Steam reviews using a multi-factor Boxleiter method (version v1.0). That median maps to approximately $43.3M 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 $4.99

Across 54 observed UTC days from 2026-05-31 to 2026-07-24, the daily lowest tracked USD price across stores ranged from $4.99 to $9.99. The tracked-window low was $4.99 on 2026-06-18.

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

Where to buy

Affiliate disclosure

Steam reference

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GOG.com

$9.99 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 04:38 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 Papers, Please sold?: indielist estimates Papers, Please has sold between 4,547,916 and 10,611,804 units (median 7,579,860), derived from its 79,788 Steam reviews with the white-box Boxleiter v1.0 method. The full breakdown is shown on the page.
Who developed Papers, Please?: Papers, Please was developed by Lucas Pope and published by 3909.
Who published Papers, Please?: Papers, Please was published by 3909, developed by Lucas Pope. See 3909's full catalogue and submission status on indielist.
When was Papers, Please released?: Papers, Please was released in 2013.
How many reviews does Papers, Please have on Steam?: Papers, Please has 79,788 Steam reviews, of which 97% are positive.
Is Papers, Please worth playing?: Steam players rate Papers, Please 97% positive across 79,788 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 Papers, Please can compare it on indielist against semantically similar Adventure titles such as Beholder, Death and Taxes, Beholder 2, OneShot, ranked by shared tags and genre rather than by ad spend. On the developer side, Lucas Pope's other releases and 3909's wider catalog are one click away, letting developers benchmark where Papers, Please 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 Papers, Please 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.