Steam's fourth most played game doesn't really make any money, and its developer says it's better off that way

Bongo Cat, currently the fourth most played game on Steam – a placing it’s held for a few months now – doesn’t actually make any money. Despite having had around 150,000 daily concurrent players since April, making it at this moment more popular than blockbusters like Elden Ring: Nightreign and Dune: Awakening, Bongo Cat isn’t able to recoup the miniscule development costs it has.

“I’ll just share it publicly,” Marcel Zurawka tells me in a video call, he being the creator of Bongo Cat and co-founder and CEO of Irox Games, the development studio that made it. “Because some people said, ‘Oh you’re now rich.’ That’s bullshit. I didn’t make it for the money at all.

“So the first month of March, we made $2000 net, after Steam cuts and everything.” Then in April, he tells me, which is the month the game received press attention and blew up, Bongo Cat made $4050. In May, the figure dropped to $3800, and as of 24th June, which is when I speak to him, the monthly tally is $2800. “It’s not even paying a developer for us,” he says. “If you just look at the numbers, it’s actually losing us money in the end.”

But income and profitability were never the point of Bongo Cat, and they never will be.

Bongo Cat is only loosely a game. Really, it’s more of an application, which overlays a cute kawaii cat somewhere on your desktop which then paw-bops a counter every time you press a key or click your mouse. It’s unobtrusive, doesn’t make any sound despite the bongo name, and other than catching the animated paw-bops in your peripheral vision – and occasional colour changes and hat swaps – doesn’t distract you from what you’re doing. Bongo Cat paw-bops and counts. It’s the sort of thing you forget about and then suddenly notice again, and marvel at your rapidly growing score.