Probably Stolen Sells 500,000 Copies on Steam in Its First 48 Hours
Questing Goose Studio's cyberpunk pawnshop sim passed 500,000 copies within 48 hours of its October 28 Steam launch, becoming tinyBuild's biggest release yet.
A cyberpunk pawnshop sim from a studio most players had never heard of a week ago has turned into one of Steam's biggest indie launches of the fall. Probably Stolen – Cyberpunk Shopkeeper Sim, developed by Questing Goose Studio and published by tinyBuild, launched on Steam on October 28 and crossed 500,000 copies sold within 48 hours, according to a string of sales updates the developer posted directly to the game's Steam community page.
A Steam Next Fest Hit Before It Even Launched
The game's breakout wasn't a total surprise to anyone who had been paying attention to Steam Next Fest. Questing Goose Studio opened a public playtest for Probably Stolen back in August, and by the developer's own account more than 100,000 people tried it and filed bug reports and surveys during that period. The momentum carried into launch week: on October 27, the day before release, the studio announced it had passed 500,000 wishlists and that the demo was one of the most-played at that Next Fest, writing simply, "that's half a million people waiting for the shutter to lift."
That kind of pre-launch number is rare for a studio without a prior hit to its name, and it set up a launch day that caught even the developers off guard once the sales updates started rolling in.
A Launch Day That Stunned Even the Developers
Probably Stolen went live on Steam on October 28, and the numbers moved fast. In a post titled "200,000 Shopkeepers trading on Lower Levels!", Questing Goose Studio reported 200,000 copies sold in the first few hours, a peak of more than 86,000 concurrent players reached within 90 minutes of going live, 95% positive reviews from over 400 ratings, and a number two spot on Steam's Global Top Sellers chart.
Those figures alone would be a strong opening for most indie releases. For Probably Stolen, they turned out to be just the first checkpoint.
The Growth Didn't Stop There
A day later, the studio posted an update covering the game's first full 24 hours: more than 350,000 copies sold, over 320,000 unique players, a new concurrent peak above 112,000, and a spot in the global top 12 most-played games on Steam. By October 30, that had grown again, with the developer announcing 500,000 copies sold, a 96% "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating from nearly 3,000 reviews, and continued placement at number 12 on Steam's most-played chart. "Honestly, we're still stunned by yesterday's numbers," the studio wrote, "hence we keep writing these posts."
tinyBuild also publishes titles including Graveyard Keeper 2 and Hello Neighbor: Welcome to Raven Brooks, both sizeable releases in their own right, which makes the scale of these numbers for a first-time collaboration with a small studio especially notable.
Running a Pawnshop Where the Merchandise Has Baggage
The appeal, going by the game's own store description, is in how specific its premise is. Players take on the role of a former scavenger who lands a storefront on a space station "thanks to a generous loan and questionable timing," then have to craft, trade and smuggle goods of murky origin while juggling faction loyalties and a landlord who keeps raising the rent. Screens from the shop counter show a running countdown to the next rent payment alongside a wanted board of suspicious customers, while a back-room 3D printer lets players strip parts for resale or refurbish them into something less obviously stolen.
It's a pitch that borrows from shopkeeper sims and dialogue-driven inspection games alike, filtered through a dystopian setting where saying no to a shady customer can be just as costly as saying yes.
Keeping the Lights On After Launch
Questing Goose Studio hasn't slowed down on support since release. Launch day alone brought a hotfix addressing a water-balance issue, and the studio shipped a bell hotkey rebind fix on October 30 followed by what it labeled a "Modding Security Update" on October 31, an early signal that community-made content for the game is already being taken seriously. For a team this size, turning around four patches in its first four days while also publishing daily sales recaps is its own kind of statement about how unprepared even the developers were for the response.
Full details on platform support and pricing are listed on tinyBuild's official game page, and the studio's Steam news feed continues to post milestone updates as the numbers keep climbing.
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Sam writes about small studios and the games they ship against the odds, and turns the hardest parts of them into guides that get to the point.
