Alora Fane

Here's a look at some sales stats for my games so far, as well as a couple of articles about the financial suicide of trying to make a living from indie games!!

I AM RELUCTANT, since I've been doing some creative stuff over the past week that I'd rather continue with than tackling this thing I find generally aversive, but I suppose I need to start doing some research into how to market games!

I've been doing some passively for the past few months, regularly checking indie devs on Twitter, reading articles when they come up, bookmarking relevant videos (which I intend to watch in bulk and take notes about). So I'm definitely more in-the-know than I was before. When I look back to how naive I was about all this when I released Sindrel Song, I feel quite embarrassed! It'll be valuable to focus on it for a bit and take some notes, though.

I wrote ∞ this post ∞ 5 days ago, with a series of questions I don't yet know the answer to and should research. I'll use that to guide me, and I'll write a new post every day this week with attempts to answer those questions.

First, though, some stuff about where I am currently, what I've achieved this year.

I have two games on Steam now: MARDEK and Memody: Sindrel Song, plus soundtrack/extras packs for both. MARDEK's been out for around 4 months, Sindrel Song (why do I call it that rather than Memody?) about 10. Here are the current total sales:

There's also this thing:

It seems to show lifetime sales, but the numbers are significantly different for some reason? So I don't know what's going on there. It lists 1431 sales for MARDEK, for example, with a gross of $11,685.71, but there's also this data I can view for the specific game:

$17k and $15k are both significantly higher than $11k, so what's going on there? I'm not used to having or dealing with money, at least not like this - Kongregate had revenue share, but it literally just gave one number per month showing what I'd earned - so can any of you make sense of this?

Hmm, there's this:

So maybe those "Life to date" stats only go up to the 23rd of September, when Steam last paid me? But the numbers still don't add up, so I don't know what's going on!

Anyway, you can see from this that sales for Sindrel Song have been poor in general, and sales for MARDEK were big at the start, but still continue to trickle in every month. I hadn't run discounts for either of the games, but this past month I experimented running something like a 20% or 30% discount for both. Here's what happened:

That's for the previous 31 days, with the +N% being relative to the 31 days before that. So sales do make a difference! I'd already been told a few times that a lot of people only buy games on sale, but it's interesting seeing that proven with data.

Here's some more data for MARDEK specifically during those 31 days:

$2208 is quite a bit higher than the ~$1100 figures from earlier, but it also says $1811 for the previous 31 days, so none of these numbers make any sense to me!

I've been wondering for a while - ∞ quite openly in blog posts ∞ - about how financially viable this games development thing is. I'd been fretting about how games make the bulk of their income in the first week, but then trail off to effectively nothing after that. While checking these numbers recently though, I was reassured a bit by seeing that the monthly numbers were quite far from zero!

(I just re-read that 4-month-old post linked to there, and it's great to see how much actually has changed for the better for me since then!)

I have no idea what other people in my country earn, but literally seconds of googling gave me ∞ this article ∞, which mentions an average of £585 per week, or £2340 a month. Let's generously say I'm getting about £900 ($1161) from Steam each month, plus £250 from ∞ my Patreon ∞ (which I'm aware I haven't updated in a while, but I'll definitely be asking people there if they want to help with testing once I've figured out how best to take the next steps). So that's £1150, which is almost exactly half of that average UK monthly income.

So financial stability remains a dream, but not as distant a dream as it once did. At the start of this year, I wrote ∞ a post ∞ with my goals for 2020, the topmost of which was to earn £12000 from my creative work, after earning around £1650 during 2019. I don't know if these sales stats show that I'm there just yet, but I feel like I'm close? So that's not nothing.

I'm wondering though how long this kind of income will last, and how often I should do discounts. Just because MARDEK's earning over $1000 a month now doesn't mean it always will.

It gives me hope though that if I could get a couple of other games out with these kinds of numbers, I might be able to make it work. At least for a while. I just need to get into the habit of releasing decently-successful games without too much time between each one. That's easier said than done!

∞ Here's an article called 'Barely Surviving as a Game Developer (While Steam Still Gets their Cut) ∞.

It mostly seems to be about advertising some blockchain-based Steam competitor or something (called Ultra; I've never heard of it), but it has some interesting bits that I'll quote.

Brian Clarke, a former developer of a AAA games, Warhammer Online terrain architect, and former Disney lead artist, has gone the route of developing independent games. He released a game called The Subject that took him seven months to develop. It takes seven months for an experienced developer, but it can be a lot slower or a bit faster, ranging from 2 months for super casual games to one year, if not more. Even for bigger teams, development can take as long as 7 years, as is the case of the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

One whole year on a game?? But that's foreeeeever!! I say, rolling my eyes, noticing that most of the indie devs I see on Twitter take considerably longer than that - unless they're making throwaway 'crapps' - so I wonder where this data is coming from. I did make Sindrel Song in about 6 months while recovering from major brain surgery, though, so maybe 7 months isn't a bad estimate. Depends on the type of game, of course.

To launch a game, you have to pay to add it to Steam. It requires paying a $100 fee that will be returned if your game makes $1,000 (that would mean that Steam already made $300 on their 30% cut).

I knew that Steam required you to pay $100 for the privilege of publishing on their platform, but I didn't know they gave it you back. Good to know.

In an article titled “Your indie game will flop and you will lose money,” the founder of Positech Games Cliff Ski talks about the chances of getting any coverage on gaming websites. He had 36 years of coding experience, shipped over a dozen games, several of which made millions of dollars, got into indie development very early, knew a lot of industry people, and had a relatively high public profile. And still, almost no one covered his latest game (in terms of gaming websites).

I'll have to look at that article later. I wonder whether his perceived prominence made him cocky, and he made something really experimental that nobody would actually like thinking it'd still succeed because of past successes. This was the case with me and Sindrel Song. Or Memody. Whatever!

Marketing is very expensive nowadays. It can cost you around $50,000 for branding, creating trailers, building social networks, a website, and doing public promotions. Other sources say that a small game requires anywhere from €10,000 up to €80,000 spent on marketing in Europe. Keep in mind that you need to pay this money out of your pocket while you’re already paying your other expenses. What if you don’t have this kind of marketing money?

I wonder whether 'branding' or owning a website actually help sales in the end. I wonder how many dev teams pay exorbitant amounts to create these things even though they make no difference to how well the game eventually sells. You could say art or music are quite expensive... unless you do them yourself. The same is true of marketing, surely.

Mike Rose, the indie publisher behind the downhill biking game Descenders, says that in February 2018 around 850 games launched on Steam. That’s about 40 a day. About 82% of those didn’t even make American minimum wage. The money that came out of 82% of the games that came out on Steam would not support a single person’s expenses.

I follow that guy on Twitter; he's one of the publishers of Hypnospace Outlaw. I'm surprised the number here isn't higher than 82%.

According to Rose's estimates of sales on Steam, once he removes games he thinks never had a chance of selling at all, the average game on Steam will sell about 2,000 copies and make $12,500 in revenue in its first month. The average game will make $30,000 in its first year. Let’s remove the 30% that Steam takes - that leaves us with only $21,000. If we cut taxes, that leaves us with a very grim, uninspiring number.

I'm... intrigued by this statistic. 2000 sales in the first month? Is that the norm? Maybe MARDEK was a particularly poor seller, then? I wonder if it'll get $30k in its first 12 months (it's been out for about 4 so far, and you can see the numbers yourself up there). It calls $21k grim, but I'd actually be quite happy with that. I could live on that, maybe.

Cliff Ski, who wrote the previous flop article, has an even worse estimation. The top indie game on Steam he looked at had over 3,500 owners, its top price at $9.99, and it’s been out for 9 months. The maximum conceivable income is $20,979 to the developer. That’s the revenue for the top indie game. Don’t forget to cut those 30% (Steam doesn’t forget it too). Only $14,685 is left, minus taxes.

That seems more realistic to me, and MARDEK's numbers compare favourably to it.

Brian Clarke, the developer of The Subject, earned $5,071 as revenue in the first four months, and after all cuts there was only $2,915 left in his pocket. Not that much for 7 months of work, right?

This also seems to be similar to a lot of what I've seen from other indie devs. It's why I'm so concerned about looking into this now, because I know Atonal Dreams will get similar or worse numbers unless I do something about it. Maybe it wouldn't do any better than Sindrel Song.

Let's look at ∞ the other article, encouragingly spittle-screamingly titled YOUR INDIE GAME WILL FLOP AND YOU WILL LOSE MONEY ∞.

It's from 2017, and the aforementioned stats (3500 owners etc) are for:

There are 348 pages of ‘top sellers’ on indie games on steam. Taking the mid point, and looking at the top game (I wont pick on it publicly, so lets not name it). Its an RPG with Zombies in apparently (that shouldn’t narrow it much :D).

I bet that was Sonny!!! Because there are no other RPGs with zombies! Or maybe it was MARDEK! I bet it was!!

This game isn’t exactly World Of Warcraft but it has a proper 3D graphics thing going on, positive reviews and a decent capsule graphic.

Oh. I wonder what it was, then. Unlike what the other article said, it doesn't seem to be the top indie game he found, but rather one deliberately chosen from around the middle of the top sellers list. The very top one likely had exponentially more sales.

The rest of the article basically stresses the point that the indie games thing is financial suicide and that pretty much nobody earns enough money from it even to get by. This I know to be true. It's why I keep falling into stress and panic when I realise the absurdity of the path I'm on... and why I avoid looking into things like this most of the time.

But I'd also like to at least finish what I'm working on now before rethinking my entire life. So for now, I need to look up how best to make it work rather than getting too disheartened by the cold reality that it probably never will!!

...I was going to keep writing this post over the rest of the day with more research, but perhaps a better way to do this would be to write one of these posts every day, or something. Few people will read them, I know, but they should at least be more digestible than some mega-post, and I'll be able to give each thing I read a chance to sink in. I hope you can also understand how mentally draining it is to read about the reality of making money from this, and how it's not something I can just dive into for extended periods without feeling like I want to just give it all up. So it's best to just take it one step at a time.

9 COMMENTS

LevProtter42~4Y

Marketing companies are definitely scams.
I read an article about how ebay paid tens of millions for promoting the word ebay.
[LINK]

When it comes to games...I don't know, being pessimistic about the chances seems to be inline with reality.
I've been getting into writing some narrative fiction games in twine and the like, and I don't really see too many avenues for ever making anything on it.
Patreon sounds good on paper, until you remember that people who use it probably already support a bunch of people, and new users aren't signing up in droves.
One idea I've been thinking about is a sort of guild of a few developers who can sell games at the same price points and share the revenue.
You can get that sale-like incentive, and make people feel like they get more for their money.
I know itch.io has a lot of features that developers like, but also a lot more indies making little to no money i guess.

Marketing companies are definitely scams.
I read an article about how ebay paid tens of millions for promoting the word ebay.
https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13228924500-22d5fd24

When it comes to games...I don't know, being pessimistic about the chances seems to be inline with reality.
I've been getting into writing some narrative fiction games in twine and the like, and I don't really see too many avenues for ever making anything on it.
Patreon sounds good on paper, until you remember that people who use it probably already support a bunch of people, and new users aren't signing up in droves.
One idea I've been thinking about is a sort of guild of a few developers who can sell games at the same price points and share the revenue.
You can get that sale-like incentive, and make people feel like they get more for their money.
I know itch.io has a lot of features that developers like, but also a lot more indies making little to no money i guess.

Tobias 1115~4Y

That's an interesting article; I read most of it but zoned out towards the end (I'm tired, it's long). I feel there's a massive difference though between something that's so huge that its company/product name has entered the dictionary, and a specific media product. I don't know how games marketing typically works, but I suspect it'd involve just making the most receptive audience aware that the game exists at all. How would people who might be interested in Atonal Dreams find it without it appearing on their radar in some way?

That's not to say I'm planning to pay for marketing, and that article helps me feel like maybe I wouldn't be missing out massively if I didn't.

I'm not earning a ton from Patreon, but I seem to be earning more than most, and it's comforting knowing that even a few people have that kind of faith in me! The psychological benefits are far greater than the financial ones... though it'd be completely different for someone just starting out who might just be discouraged by others' lack of faith in them on that platform.

That's an interesting idea about a guild of developers! I'd be interested in something like that... in theory, though in practice I wonder whether it'd be like herding cats. People who go down the indie path (at least speaking from my perspective) tend to prefer to make their own decisions, be their own leaders, so I wonder if it'd be possible to get a bunch together in a harmonious group!

I need to look into itch.io; I don't know enough about it. I've added it to my list of questions!

That's an interesting article; I read most of it but zoned out towards the end (I'm tired, it's long). I feel there's a /massive/ difference though between something that's so huge that its company/product name has entered the dictionary, and a specific media product. I don't know how games marketing typically works, but I suspect it'd involve just making the most receptive audience aware that the game exists at all. How would people who might be interested in Atonal Dreams find it without it appearing on their radar in some way?

That's not to say I'm planning to pay for marketing, and that article helps me feel like maybe I wouldn't be missing out massively if I didn't.

I'm not earning a ton from Patreon, but I seem to be earning more than most, and it's comforting knowing that even a few people have that kind of faith in me! The psychological benefits are far greater than the financial ones... though it'd be completely different for someone just starting out who might just be discouraged by others' lack of faith in them on that platform.

That's an interesting idea about a guild of developers! I'd be interested in something like that... in theory, though in practice I wonder whether it'd be like herding cats. People who go down the indie path (at least speaking from my perspective) tend to prefer to make their own decisions, be their own leaders, so I wonder if it'd be possible to get a bunch together in a harmonious group!

I need to look into itch.io; I don't know enough about it. I've added it to my list of questions!

LevProtter42~4Y

Keep it up man!
The digital marketing article is a bit too long, my point was more about how opaque and difficult marketing is, even with all the resources (they have expensive graduates, and professors, and it might all be a sham.).

There is a movement towards more niche, community driven 'marketing' like this:
[LINK]
I think it's healthy and good.
More so, there are a lot of people who remember your work fondly, and people are willing to engage with it(I might get to paying when I'm more liquid).

Another thing is talking openly (and constructively) about mental health. I think it's another strong point of yours that can really help build a healthy community.

Also this site is real nice.

Tobias 1115~4Y

What that video talked about is exactly what I'm hoping to achieve: a small but loyal following who genuinely care about what I'm making, rather than faceless masses who'll forget about it tomorrow. That's way more stress. The challenge is in gathering enough of those people together to be financially viable. I'm getting there on Patreon, though it's still a way off yet.

kasheeste2133~4Y

Man you need some positive vibes... too much doom and gloom; too much focus on failures. Why not try looking at some indie success stories? Papers please, don't starve, rimworld, freaking minecraft... if its a good game people will eventually find it.
Imo, the whole JRPG thing might limit your success somewhat as a ridiculously over-saturated market but at the end of the day people don't always make them as a hobby. As for tallying Mardek's place in the modern market it just doesn't seem like a fair matchup... It's a decade old game which anybody who is interested would have already played on Kongregate, we'll never know the amount of people that saw it for sale and thought "Oh yeah, I loved that game... but I've already been there and done that."
I'm just going to say as a friend, you need to relax and just let the magic happen. It really seems like you're losing hope and motivation lately from all this marketing nonsense and I don't want to see you burning out or having a stroke from all the worry. "Everything that happens, happens as it should; and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so."

Man you need some positive vibes... too much doom and gloom; too much focus on failures. Why not try looking at some indie success stories? Papers please, don't starve, rimworld, freaking minecraft... if its a good game people will eventually find it. 
Imo, the whole JRPG thing might limit your success somewhat as a ridiculously over-saturated market but at the end of the day people don't always make them as a hobby. As for tallying Mardek's place in the modern market it just doesn't seem like a fair matchup... It's a decade old game which anybody who is interested would have already played on Kongregate, we'll never know the amount of people that saw it for sale and thought "Oh yeah, I loved that game... but I've already been there and done that." 
I'm just going to say as a friend, you need to relax and just let the magic happen. It really seems like you're losing hope and motivation lately from all this marketing nonsense and I don't want to see you burning out or having a stroke from all the worry. "Everything that happens, happens as it should; and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so."

Tobias 1115~4Y

I didn't mean to be entirely negative here; I'm just trying to assess the reality of the situation and to figure out how those few hits did it so then I might succeed enough to get by.

Sindrel Song was an example of "letting the magic happen", and it's the failure of that which is motivating me to look into this. Imagine if you'd spent six months of your life on something, hoping to make a living from it, only to earn less than most jobs would get you in a month!

MARDEK's hardly a typical indie release, so I know it's not the best comparison for anything really. It's just the only thing I have for sale with decent numbers behind it. It's best to look at Sindrel Song as an example of how indies usually fare.

Ptyrell37~4Y

I moved the numbers you posted to a spreadsheet and did some googling, and this is what I've come up with to help bring context to all the numbers steam is throwing at you.

- 17.3k is the total money Mardek + DLCs made
- 15.4k is that minus returns and taxes
- Since you won't make a ton of money, you should get a chunk of that difference back when you file taxes this year. Maybe several hundreds of dollars? I don't know exactly how UK taxes work, but Googling says it is relatively similar, and you should be close enough to the standard deduction (personal allowance?) to get money back. Though maybe not actually if you don't pay taxes on money through Patreon? Which is US based? wow, confusing...
- Looks like Steam takes a 30% cut. So that takes the 15k down to the 11k that you have received into your bank account. The numbers aren't exact, but that's because of the following two points:
- The "Steam Sales Report: Life to date" report seems to update when you get paid. That is why the Total Revenue Share column near the end matches the total in your Payment History, which only counts through August sales.
- Seems like the current units statistics are updated in real time (makes sense). And in fact, if you take the Life to Date number of sales (updated through August) and add the number of sales recorded from 9/3-10/3 where you talk about the sale, you get very close to the number reported for current units sold!

Also I don't use Steam enough to say definitively, but I'm guessing when you ran the sale for your games, perhaps everyone with it on their wishlist who hadn't purchased it yet received a notification which prompted them to buy it? So future sales may not be as successful, but probably still will help?

Anyways I hope that rundown helps. I'm no professional, but I find it kind of fun to do this stuff. I'm happy to help more if I can, so please feel free to reach out here, on Discord, or I can send you my email if you want.

I moved the numbers you posted to a spreadsheet and did some googling, and this is what I've come up with to help bring context to all the numbers steam is throwing at you.

- 17.3k is the total money Mardek + DLCs made
- 15.4k is that minus returns and taxes
- Since you won't make a ton of money, you should get a chunk of that difference back when you file taxes this year. Maybe several hundreds of dollars? I don't know exactly how UK taxes work, but Googling says it is relatively similar, and you should be close enough to the standard deduction (personal allowance?) to get money back. Though maybe not actually if you don't pay taxes on money through Patreon? Which is US based? wow, confusing...
- Looks like Steam takes a 30% cut. So that takes the 15k down to the 11k that you have received into your bank account. The numbers aren't exact, but that's because of the following two points:
- The "Steam Sales Report: Life to date" report seems to update when you get paid. That is why the Total Revenue Share column near the end matches the total in your Payment History, which only counts through August sales.
- Seems like the current units statistics are updated in real time (makes sense). And in fact, if you take the Life to Date number of sales (updated through August) and add the number of sales recorded from 9/3-10/3 where you talk about the sale, you get very close to the number reported for current units sold!

Also I don't use Steam enough to say definitively, but I'm guessing when you ran the sale for your games, perhaps everyone with it on their wishlist who hadn't purchased it yet received a notification which prompted them to buy it? So future sales may not be as successful, but probably still will help?

Anyways I hope that rundown helps. I'm no professional, but I find it kind of fun to do this stuff. I'm happy to help more if I can, so please feel free to reach out here, on Discord, or I can send you my email if you want.

Tobias 1115~4Y

Thanks for looking into the numbers more than I could be bothered to myself! Well, sort of; I think I came to similar conclusions you did here, but I still don't fully understand it since the amount that's actually appeared in my bank account seems more like $8000?

I've never paid taxes because I've never made enough money! I've been wondering when it'd be necessary, though (and if I'd even ever get to that point), so I just looked it up, and it seems you don't have to pay taxes on the first £12500 you earn... or at least that's what I can tell from looking at the gov.uk page, though I'm not used to dealing with money stats stuff at all. I suppose "earn enough that I have to start paying taxes" should be my goal. Should I be filing taxes - whatever that involves - even though I'm not earning as much as the personal allowance? I have no idea. How do people even know to do these things, and how to do them?

Looks like I can only run Steam discounts every six weeks, which I didn't know before. I don't know if people are notified, but if they are, maybe people who might not have been in the mood during one sale would be for a future one?

I'll keep you in mind to ask about this stuff if the need arises again, which it probably will because this absolutely isn't my area of interest or expertise!

I've never paid taxes because I've never made enough money! I've been wondering when it'd be necessary, though (and if I'd even ever get to that point), so I just looked it up, and it seems you don't have to pay taxes on the first £12500 you earn... or at least that's what I can tell from looking at the gov.uk page, though I'm not used to dealing with money stats stuff at all. I suppose "earn enough that I have to start paying taxes" should be my goal. Should I be filing taxes - whatever that involves - even though I'm not earning as much as the personal allowance? I have no idea. How do people even know to do these things, and /how/ to do them?

Looks like I can only run Steam discounts every six weeks, which I didn't know before. I don't know if people are notified, but if they are, maybe people who might not have been in the mood during one sale would be for a future one?

I'll keep you in mind to ask about this stuff if the need arises again, which it probably will because this absolutely isn't my area of interest or expertise!

Ptyrell37~4Y

I'm guessing your bank converted the money from dollars to pounds? If so, you probably lost some of that money to the bank during conversion. Maybe there even was some sort of foreign transaction fee? Possible there even could be an additional tax I don't know about since you were "making money in another country." Theoretically your bank should provide you with some of that info.

You probably lose a greater percent of your money when your bank converts small amounts of money compared to larger amounts. It seems like some people prefer to keep their money in an account that does not convert it away from dollars, so they can convert larger lump sums all at once when they find good conversion rates with lower bank fees. If your bank is converting the smaller monthly deposits of $100-$200, that's probably not ideal.

It's a pretty common misconception for people not to think they should file taxes because they didn't make enough money. The reality is though that people pay taxes every single time they get a paycheck, because the money is automatically deducted from their pay. If you don't earn enough money to pay taxes, then you ABSOLUTELY should file for taxes, so you can get back all the money you paid throughout the year back on your tax return. Unfortunately many people don't realize this, because nobody ever teaches them. I learned it from reading on the internet. This stuff should be mandatory teaching for seniors in high school though in my opinion.

You probably lose a greater percent of your money when your bank converts small amounts of money compared to larger amounts. It seems like some people prefer to keep their money in an account that does not convert it away from dollars, so they can convert larger lump sums all at once when they find good conversion rates with lower bank fees. If your bank is converting the smaller monthly deposits of $100-$200, that's probably not ideal.

It's a pretty common misconception for people not to think they should file taxes because they didn't make enough money. The reality is though that people pay taxes every single time they get a paycheck, because the money is automatically deducted from their pay. If you don't earn enough money to pay taxes, then you ABSOLUTELY should file for taxes, so you can get back all the money you paid throughout the year back on your tax return. Unfortunately many people don't realize this, because nobody ever teaches them. I learned it from reading on the internet. This stuff should be mandatory teaching for seniors in high school though in my opinion.