2025 Domestic Galgame Annual Summary Vol.0: A Brief Review of Sales and Crowdfunding Data

A year ago, I wrote an article titled “A Simple Data Overview of Current Domestic Galgames” and summarized the annual data for 2024, discussing some general aspects of domestic Galgames.

Now, as 2025 has also passed, I will follow the usual practice and do a yearly summary.

Before starting the next presentation, a quick disclaimer: all content comes from works listed on CnGal. The scope broadly covers games that primarily feature beautiful girls as their main selling point, so there may be omissions. Comments and corrections are welcome.

Regarding the differences in definitions, it’s generally undisputed that these are “beautiful girl games.” Whether they involve romance or are purely visual novels (VNs) varies depending on individual perspectives.

For example, games like “Chinese-style Dating” that include simulation management elements can be seen in some Galgames, but some players might not consider them as such; “Paper House,” mainly a yuri work aimed at female players, satisfies the criteria of beautiful girls + romance + visual novel, but there’s little mention of it being related to Galgames; and titles like “Boy Girl Love Story” are similar to works like “Female Mountain,” but not all players consider these as “beautiful girl” games… Therefore, these works (a total of 11) will be listed separately in subsequent necessary statistics such as sales volume and revenue.

The total number of works has slightly decreased compared to 2023 and 2024, even including AI-generated art projects.

Compared to the number of Japanese Galgames recorded by Criticism Space (964 titles, with 446 commercial works), the current number of domestic works still lags by more than ten times.

In terms of production scale, most are created by individuals or small groups (teams). With the popularization of AI art tools, the proportion of solo creators is increasing. However, as of 2025, many projects have started with AI-generated images, but few finished products have actually been released.

Currently, the main engines are still Unity and Ren’Py, with Ren’Py slightly more prevalent in purely visual novel titles. There are rumors of switching to Godot due to issues with Unity, but Godot’s usage remains relatively low in recent years, and its community ecosystem still needs time to develop.

Among the 11 works with “definition disputes,” “Chinese-style Dating” and “Rebellious Spirit” have significantly higher production costs than most pure VNs. On the other hand, “Boy Girl Love Story” is more of a marketing anomaly: released in July, but its sales and popularity exploded in November. Based on subsequent sales and play data, it’s clear that its user base is not large; it’s more of a meme spread.

The “daily active cumulative” data comes from SteamDB’s daily active user counts. Since the same player may appear on multiple days, these figures do not represent unique players but can reflect the ongoing popularity of a work to some extent.

“Small Figure,” released in November, is a dark horse. Its reach far exceeds other titles, but since it’s free, it did not generate direct revenue for the creators.

Forecasted sales and revenue are averaged from Gamalytic and VG Insights, with a tendency to overestimate overall sales figures based on experience.

Over 80% of domestic Galgames have no publisher, which correlates with lower production costs.

LSP’s share is relatively small because their hit last year, “Goodbye Broken Sword,” was not included, and “Boy Girl Love Story” was excluded due to definition disputes. However, their past works and unconventional marketing strategies are more recognized within the community compared to other publishers.

Focusing only on the top titles is one-sided; a more representative measure of most creators’ real situations is the median.

In 2025, after removing definition disputes, AI projects, and free works, the median sales volume is 1,053.5, and the median revenue is 21,263.

In comparison, the median sales in 2024 was around 2,000, nearly halving.

This indicates that relying solely on Steam’s regular sales makes it difficult for most projects to cover costs such as art, voice acting, outsourcing, and marketing, making losses more common. Since late 2024, crowdfunding has become a new channel for promotion and pre-sales, driven by the excellent performance of several hit projects that year.

By offering game keys below Steam’s price to avoid the 30% platform cut, and bundling related merchandise to increase the price tier, crowdfunding has evolved into a model: game (usually around 20 yuan) + merchandise costs + shipping/storage + merchandise markup + platform fees.

During promotion, the total crowdfunding amount is often equated with the project’s available development budget, but the actual funds for development are usually much less. This will be explained in detail in the subsequent crowdfunding section.

In 2025, over half of the projects’ crowdfunding amounts did not exceed 100,000 yuan, with a median of 50,084. Before June 1, the median was 83,358; afterward, it dropped to 47,963—almost halving in perception.

Crowdfunding/pre-sale methods carry high uncertainty and risk. With unchecked project expansion, a series of public opinions and controversies are almost inevitable.

After presenting these cold data, I’d like to share some subjective and biased thoughts.

【Galgame】 is essentially just one of many labels attached to games, and the broadest one at that.

That’s why some joke: “Well-made ones are indie games; if it bombs, it’s a national G.”

In current context, it’s more like a “risk label.” When a title “fails,” public opinion quickly elevates it to an attack on the entire “national G” scene.

When trying to recommend truly solid works, it’s often difficult because the total number of domestic Galgames is small, and the number of high-quality titles is insufficient. Once a few titles fail, the impression tends to be fixed.

In contrast, Japanese Galgames have a large enough stockpile, with many well-received works accumulated over time, making them more accessible and recommendable. Low-quality or problematic titles are often not localized, reducing exposure.

Meanwhile, public opinion is largely driven by a few top titles and major incidents: when high-quality works are scarce, and some publishers overly rely on controversy and traffic for promotion, the overall reputation tends to tilt negative.

This creates a vicious cycle: failures are more likely to be circulated and spread, while honest but ordinary works lack promotion and remain unknown.

However, trend-wise, the Galgame topic remains hot in 2025, AI technology lowers programming barriers, the bubble of secondary titles deflates, leading to talent flow, and the public operation of Japanese Galgames in mainland China becomes more convenient, further expanding the community. These factors combined may lead to more ordinary creators producing “single-player beautiful girl narrative games.”

Hopefully, over time, more high-quality, well-recommendable works will emerge, bringing discussions back to the works themselves.

Data sources: CnGal, XiaoHeiHe, Gamalytic, VG Insight

Images and text: Sliots

Crowdfunding data compilation: PH64E