No that's what I did to estimate how much Destiny 2 made THIS YEAR. about 3 Mil though i fully admit that number is all but made up from nothing but guesstimating.
The best of steam page linked earlier was for 2024 profits. While we don't know the exact order of most to least on that list, Destiny 2 was in the "Platinum" category, meaning it grossed more than any game in the gold category through Steam.
Let's take a game released in 2024, in the gold category, and see if there's any reports on how many it sold. Enshrouded fits this criteria, released 1/24/24, in gold category, and has reports on how many copies it sold.
By the end of 2024, it hit over 3 million copies sold with a price of $30. Sales*price puts that at $90 million for 2024, and they were still beat by Destiny 2 in revenue through Steam for 2024.
If the Steam best of 2024 was lifetime revenue there would definitely be other live service games in plat above Enshrouded, or even push it down into silver.
The other games in plat make sense. ER had it's DLC release, Palworld and Helldivers hit massive popularity early in the year.
AS for Wukong that's 25Milion total sold I'm trying to figure out how much they made this year which is where my number came from. If i had to estimate their total profits including merch sales and shit like that then yeah it's nearly a billion or more. Which is another reason i find BMW suspect all the reports on it i can find are seemingly including the toys and other shitty merch as part of the games sales?
Elden Ring is reported to have sold 30 million copies to current day, it has 763k steam reviews, and had an all time player peak of 952k. Black Myth Wukong is reported to have sold 25 million copies, it has 866k steam reviews, and had an all time player peak of 2.4m. Comparing it the stats of a game that did undeniably well makes the 25 mil sales figures of JUST copies of the game believable. You are reading a lot into them mentioning merch sales are also going good, thinking that is included in the games sales figures they are touting.
Live service games that reach any level of success make money hand over fist. Why do you think companies keep trying to launch their own success? Sure a lot bomb, but if the ones still alive were losing money, they'd be shutdown, like all of the bombed games did.