It has been a remarkably busy week for the prolific game publisher Hard Shark Games. On September 15, the company made waves across the digital storefront by releasing an astonishing 29 games on Steam in a single day, spanning a dizzying array of genres.
Not only did Hard Shark Games publish that vast number of titles overnight, but the company is also officially credited as the developer for every single one of them. Unsurprisingly, given the sheer volume of releases, all 29 titles share a common trait: they are early access projects. "We’re launching in Early Access to involve the community from the very start," reads the opening sentence of every single early access blurb for Hard Shark Games’ September 2026 slate. These releases cover genres as diverse as racing, retail simulation, survival horror, sports, flight simulation, and 2D platformers.
This mass-publishing strategy is nothing new for the entity. A remarkably similar approach was deployed on March 4 of the previous year, when Hard Shark Games dropped another batch of 29 titles onto the platform. The promotional text across these store pages follows the exact same template. For instance, the blurb for Speedboat Simulator opens with the identical phrase: "We’re launching in Early Access to involve the community from the very start." The same holds true for Toy Battlegrounds: Shoot ‘Em Up Survival and dozens of other titles in their catalog, revealing a highly automated and standardized approach to marketing and distribution.
The pattern extends far beyond initial store descriptions and stretches directly into how the company handles its early access updates. Maintenance and patch notes for titles such as Starship Fighters, Sky Combat, and Streets of Rageness are identical down to the letter. The patch notes for all three games—published on March 5 within a span of just five minutes—open with the exact same declaration: "Optimized several core systems, resulting in smoother gameplay and up to 10% better overall performance, especially during longer sessions."
Given the low-effort nature of these releases, casual observers might wonder if such an enterprise can actually turn a profit. The financial mechanics of Steam make the math surprisingly viable. Publishing a game on Steam requires a $100 store page fee, which is fully recoupable once a title generates more than $1,000 in adjusted gross revenue. Consequently, it would have cost Hard Shark Games $2,900 to publish its 29 unpromising-looking titles.
By applying the popular Boxleiter Method—an industry-standard approach that utilizes a game’s public Steam review count to estimate overall sales—analysts can gauge the financial return of these projects. For example, Supermarket Life Simulator could have brought in anywhere from $295 on the lower end to $885 as a high estimate. Meanwhile, Pool shows potential earnings ranging between $926 and $2,780, while F1 Simulator sits comfortably with a high estimate of $1,686 and a low estimate of $562.
Adding up the conservative low-end estimates for just those three games alone reveals that they generated $1,783 in the five days following their release. That figure accounts for well over half of Hard Shark Games’ total outlay for all 29 store listings in less than a week on the market. If the higher sales estimates prove accurate, the initial $2,900 investment has likely been surpassed many times over, proving that this high-volume publishing model pays off handsomely.
Of course, that math assumes these games cost virtually nothing to produce, which is largely the case. Many of these titles rely heavily on pre-built templates purchased from digital asset marketplaces. For instance, Supermarket Life Simulator clearly utilizes the $50 Checkout Frenzy – Convenience Store Simulator Unity template, a framework shared by numerous low-budget retail simulators on Steam. While using pre-built templates is a common practice for indie developers, comparing screenshots of Supermarket Life Simulator with the Unity asset pack reveals identical grocery imagery. Steam user reviews frequently accuse Hard Shark Games of operating as a classic asset-flip outfit, a criticism leveled against the publisher quite often within community watchdog groups.
Puzzling visual anomalies further highlight the hasty assembly process. In promotional screenshots for the creatively titled Axe Slasher, sharp-eyed users even spotted Kratos, the iconic protagonist from Sony’s God of War franchise, inexplicably mixed into the background materials.
In total, Hard Shark Games maintains a staggering 217 listings on Steam, encompassing 121 distinct games and 96 separate demos. Despite the massive library, player engagement remains remarkably low. The highest peak concurrent player figure across the publisher’s entire catalog sits at a modest 13 users. To add insult to injury, that all-time record belongs to a demo—specifically the now-defunct Supermarket Simulator Pro Demo.
While very few people actually play these games, the sheer velocity of production allows a lean operation—potentially run by a single individual—to churn out extremely cheap, template-based software at a rapid pace, turning the venture into a surprisingly lucrative enterprise. Industry watchers have noted that Hard Shark Games is hardly alone in this space; other notable entities have pushed the boundaries of catalog size even further, with BFG Entertainment having released 555 games and PlayWay, the spiritual home of quickly turned-around retail simulators, boasting a catalog of 340 titles.
Top Steam games by revenue (September 8 – 15)
Wardogs hitting the number one spot in its launch week was largely expected, representing a rare example of an early access multiplayer launch where the community conversation focuses on praise rather than technical shortcomings. Players have embraced the tactical first-person shooter enthusiastically during its opening days.
Meanwhile, The Blood of Dawnwalker, which claimed the top revenue spot during its own launch week, slipped to number tenth, representing a solid continuing performance for a single-player RPG. It notably outperformed Onimusha on PC, with the latter dropping from sixth place last week down to thirteenth, though the title is reportedly performing much stronger on PlayStation consoles.
Halloween: The Game also appeared in the weekly revenue charts despite not being officially available in Australia, where it was refused classification due to regulatory concerns surrounding depicted drug use.
As the digital storefront continues to grapple with the realities of automated publishing, low-cost asset flips, and high-volume curation strategies, developers and players alike continue to monitor the shifting economic landscape of the world’s largest PC gaming platform.