The conventional wisdom is that you can figure out roughly how many copies a game has sold on Steam by taking the number of user reviews and multiplying it by 50 (on the pessimistic end) or 100 (on the optimistic end). A thread! (again, sorry - threads are the worst!)
Golf with Your Friends, one of my favorite multiplayer games, has 17321 user reviews (remember, that's between 866k and 1732k copies sold, quite a bit more than, say, Ico). But it has 0 critic reviews on Metacritic. 
My Summer Car, one of my favorite roguelikes, has 18,591 steam user reviews (let's say 900k-1800k copies sold, seemingly more than Assassin's Creed: Origins sold at launch). Also has 0 critic reviews per Metacritic.
The Scroll of Taiwu, a beautiful-looking game I can't wait to play, has 20,518 steam user reviews, which puts it in the ballpark of Bloodborne (or Doom!) in terms of sales. It reached over 50k simultaneous players, which is HUGE. Critic reviews: 0 for Taiwu, 100 for Bloodborne.
HuniePop has 16,238 *overwhelmingly positive* user reviews, which implies probably more units sold than the Goose Game (which I love). 1 solitary critic review on metacritic, next to the Goose's 80+.
The Isle has 16,001 user reviews, so I guess roughly between $16 million and $32 million in gross sales. 0 critic reviews on metacritic.
ATLAS has 28,563 steam user reviews and had over 50k simultaneous players for 2 years, probably putting it near Nioh in terms of units sold. 1 metacritic review (Nioh has about 120)
Takeaways:
- There are a lot of hit games that do not get written up in the press at all.
- Reviews are no longer a prerequisite for driving sales.
- You can't stay up to date any more just by reading reviews.
- Lots of invisible market niches to develop for!
- There are a lot of hit games that do not get written up in the press at all.
- Reviews are no longer a prerequisite for driving sales.
- You can't stay up to date any more just by reading reviews.
- Lots of invisible market niches to develop for!
