The success of Dressmaker, the sewing game that reached Steam’s top 10 sellers

Dressmaker launched on 21 September with more than 400,000 wishlists behind it, and by the next day it was already at number 9 on Steam’s global top sellers, ahead of EA Sports FC 27 and Overwatch. It now has almost 2,000 reviews with 96% of them positive.

The best part is that its creators were told the game was too niche and that they should not expect much. They have told the story themselves on their Steam blog, and right now they could not be happier with the results.

• Title: Dressmaker
• Developer: Cozy Lives
• Publisher: Free Lives
• Genre: Casual sewing simulation
• Platforms: PC (Windows and macOS)
• Release date: 21 September 2026

What Dressmaker is about

Eres dressmaker and you run your own shop. Customers come in with an order and you have to see it through, which means choosing the fabric, preparing and cutting the pieces following the pattern, sewing them on the machine and finishing the garment with its decorations.

El craft is recreated in a lot of detail. You get to decide how you lay the pieces out on the fabric and whether you cut the patterns on the grain or on the bias, and those decisions end up showing in the final result. You can also combine different fabrics in the same garment.

The idea that gives it its own personality is that you can do it badly on purpose. The game lets you please the customer or sabotage them, so the garment you hand over says quite a lot about what you think of whoever ordered it. There is no timer and no way to fail, because it is built for you to go at your own pace.

Behind it is Cozy Lives, a new label from Free Lives, the South African studio behind Broforce and GORN. The contrast is so extreme that the developers themselves joked on launch day. They had been thrown off Free Lives’ social media for making a game “so devoid of violence, so flagrantly feminine and so painfully sincere”.

The numbers behind the success

The studio has not published sales figures, which is normal for an indie that has just come out. But there are enough official numbers to get a pretty clear idea of what has happened.

• More than 100,000 wishlists in June 2026, announced by the studio itself on Steam.
• More than 200,000 on 28 July, the day they confirmed the release date.
• More than 400,000 by the time it launched, according to the press release.
• Number 9 on Steam’s global top sellers on 22 September, one day after release.
• More than 6,000 concurrent players within hours of going on sale.
• 1,996 reviews and 96% positive as of today, with the “Overwhelmingly Positive” label.

That 96% is holding up well, and that is what strikes me most. The day after launch there were 706 reviews and the percentage was already there, so this is not the usual initial spike from the biggest fans that deflates as soon as the general audience arrives.

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Why has Dressmaker succeeded?

Even though a big chunk of the gamer crowd cannot understand this success, I have found a few reasons that explain the Dressmaker phenomenon.

An audience with no games like this

The argument that it was too niche turned out to be exactly the opposite of what happened, because the gap was there and nothing was filling it. Job simulators have worked very well on Steam for years, but nobody had touched sewing with this level of seriousness.

In fact, similar games tried to pull the idea off and did not quite manage it. Titles like Fashion Dreamer on Nintendo Switch were already going for that “Style Boutique” style. They were very popular with the female and Nintendo audience, but they were missing a twist to make them even bigger.

And let us not forget the huge boom of Dress to Impress (Roblox) in 2024. It went massively viral and proved that this kind of game, inspired by the classic free dress-up browser games, has an audience nobody is serving.

Dressmaker is well made and well thought out

The craft is genuinely well made. It is not sewing by pressing a button and making a dress in a shallow, easy way. Every order imitates the real process of making the garment by choosing fabrics, cutting patterns and sewing. It is exactly the same reason PowerWash Simulator and House Flipper are so moreish.

On top of that, it has an idea of its own that fits in one sentence. Being able to sabotage a customer is what separates Dressmaker from a merely competent simulator. That is why it is so rewarding to record, since the finished garments speak for themselves and nothing needs explaining for you to understand what you are looking at. People love creating moments and sharing them on social media or with friends, so the game works really well on TikTok and YouTube Shorts. That has done a good chunk of the marketing at no cost to the studio.

The studio behind it (Cozy Lives)

Something a lot of players appreciate is that there is no catch in the business model. You pay once and that is it. In a genre where microtransactions and season passes are the norm, the studio has made a point of including none of that. That resonates with an audience already tired of the opposite.

As the icing on the cake, the publisher Free Lives has a long track record with games like Terra Nil and Broforce, so it already had contacts and reach. A small studio with this same game would have taken much longer to reach 400,000 wishlists, even if the game were just as good.

Where to get it

Dressmaker is on Steam for PC and Mac. It costs 15.47 euros, although until 28 September it has a 10% launch discount that brings it down to 13.92 euros. It is a single-player game, with achievements and no time limits.

You can take a look at Dressmaker on Steam if you fancy giving it a go.