Steam sales are always a great opportunity to pick up some bargains, and the recent Steam Winter Sale, which ran from December 18, 2025 until January 5, 2026, was no exception. While many games typically see a spike in sales and players during these periods, one multiplayer game saw a particularly huge surge in sales following an enormous discount.
Icarus, a PvE survival game from New Zealand studio RocketWerkz that was first released in December 2021, was reduced from its usual $35 price to a mere $3.50 during the Steam Winter Sale – an enormous 90% saving.
Now, RocketWerkz founder Dean Hall has revealed just how many copies of Icarus were sold during the sale. In a post on X, Hall shared that that an enormous 984,000 copies were during this sales period. On top of that, the game’s DLC, which includes two expansions and a “pets” bundle, moved a further 243,000 units.
Over the steam winter sale, ICARUS sold just under a million new base game units during the sale (984k). We also did quarter of a million DLC units (243k).
— Dean Hall (@rocket2guns) January 12, 2026
These sales also led to a huge increase in the game’s active player base. According to SteamDB, the game enjoyed a massive spike in players during December 2025, with a peak concurrent player count of 44,120 (compared to 9076 in November). This is the highest concurrent player count the game has had since its launch month, December 2021.
Dean Hall is no stranger to hugely popular online games – he was the developer of DayZ, a 2012 zombie survival game that tasked players with surviving in a post-apocalyptic, zombie-filled world where other players were just as dangerous as the undead. The game started life as a mod for Arma 2 before eventually receiving a standalone release.
Steam has already announced dates for the next few rounds of sales, through to May 2026. Coming up in January are the Detective Fest from January 12 -19 and the Board Game Fest from January 26 – February 2.