How much MONEY I've made selling my indie GAMES on STEAM? | Indie Game
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- Опубліковано 10 тра 2024
- My first games that I sold on steam in my game developer career have been selling for a while so I wanted to take a look at how much money they have made. I also wanted to go over how I can improve being a game dev based on what I've seen work and what has failed so far. So how much money I've made selling my indie games on steam? Well that is the question, so I wanted to go over making money sellings games, selling your game on steam, and how to make money as a game developer. I hope you learn something from this so your indie game launch goes well!
The awesome pixel art Blekoh in the intro were made by:
/ @shiruht2268
You might like my other videos:
• Making a Sci-Fi VR Gam...
• Developing a New Game ...
• Making My Dream Game |...
#programming
#gamedev
#money - Ігри
Tips I could give you from my experiences making 16 games on steam:
1. Better games don't always sell more, fun games do. My best sellers took a few weeks or days to make.
2. Low price is not a bad idea as it makes it more accessible, and kids have money from their csgo skins, praise valve
3. You don't need to update to use visibility rounds, but it can help
I absolutely agree on the first point you've made there. Most of the indie games are pretty much low quality but hella fun!
better game is suppost to be fun
@@zakajusyt9483 "better" isn't defined by fun or sales it's defined by the creator. Something any developer should understand.
I agree on point 1. I've seen so many games with very well executed but boring mechanics and then there are games that look like school programming projects but are incredibly fun and original. I'd rather spend money on tha latter!
which games have you made?
Finally someone made a video being real about how steam launches usually goes
i feel like they usually make less
Finally? Their are hundreds of videos like this.
Usually they are I was so successful.
I love that you shared this info.So nice to get some insight into the whole process.Thanks for sharing
Thanks for posting this friend! I just launch a game on Steam to a resounding thud. I fully expected and embraced this result. My first game is just a learning experience. I'm hoping to do better whenever I make my next game. Thanks for the tips!
Aww man, yeah it definitely doesn't feel great even if you kinda expect it haha but there is a lot that you learn once you do it (like all of the stuff besides just making the game) thats worth it just for learning experience. Though I will say its not all over just from the initial sale. I'd say maybe about 30% of the total sales I've gotten were from the beginning and the rest were from taking advantage of steam sales and just talking about it to people and you can always update it for more visibility rounds. Good luck with that and the next one though!
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Awesome video! These are some really good tips. I will definitely keep them in mind when starting my steam page. Also thanks for sharing the data on the wishlist and how much profit and cost was involved. Those are some valuable information. Anyway, Keep it up! :)
Good luck on your game!
pretty insightful vid, thank you
also pretty chill delivery, i subbed
these are actually useful tips thank you
Thank you!
Wow you're experience is great for me i need to more invest on my game .
Very cool! thank for this information and good luck!!!
Thanks for sharing your experience it may save people's lives literally
That is the best thing about failures and mistakes because they are the best teachers in life for you to improve. You are ahead than most people who are scared to fail and make mistakes, and don’t see failure and mistake as an opportunity to learn and improve.
Thank you for making this video!
My feedback as a steam customer who sometimes supports indie developers: When "$7.99" flashed up on the screen for Beardy McStrongarm my knee-jerk, gut reaction was "woah, no.... no, no, no".
$7.99 for a low budget, indie platformer in a world where I can buy many AAA games for anything from $5 to $20 (during a steam sale) and others are completely free? A world where time-tested classic games can be purchased for $2-$8?
Now I realise there are other factors at play. (Eg. some people in the indie scene will buy it just to support an indie developer, you want it to have perceived value, etc.) but it's my opinion that you probably cut out a very large portion of your potential market by setting the price so high. I reckon you'd have more chance of selling 1000 copies at $1.99 than 200 copies at $7.99.
Anyway, that is just my 2 cents. Keep up the good work!
This deserves a sub!
Ayyy thanks 👈🏻👈🏻🤖
Thanks for sharing bro. Im in school full time making a c++ game from scratch and good lord it is so much work. Congratulations on getting thru this epic process TWICE!!!
Good luck doood 👈🏻👈🏻🤖
thanks for sharing!
very good tips, i'll keep it in mind!!!
Good stuff to know 👍
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Interesting video, thanks for the information!
Ads work! (says someone that dropped $100 on ads and got nothing) What I've learned is that 1) they work - otherwise why would people pay to have them there all the time? 2) we need to make better copy/creative/whatever the ad contains to make it enticing for people to click. Also, picking the right audience is crucial. Imagine selling a racing game to a FPS audience.
Yeah I agree that ads can work (large companies use them so why not indie devs) the difference is that most people who make an indie game want a quick way to promote their game and that sort of idea leads to people spending money on ads and getting nothing in return.
I think a lot of people spend 99% making their game and try to spend 1% on everything else including marketing and promoting their game and I think that is really what I wanted to say is that if you aren’t willing to do a ton of research and put a lot of effort into the marketing then it probably is best to avoid putting your money into ads.
For me i created this channel as an alternative option, making devlogs and getting people interested in the games in my opinion is 100% better than giving someone just an ad, it also lets people see the game and as a dev you can use the feedback to adjust the direction. So I think it’s important for people to weigh all of their promotion options whether it is ads, a yt channel, twitter, Instagram, or a combination of everything 👈🏻👈🏻🤖
@@Blekoh Channels work too, for marketing. That's if they get picked up by the algorithm.. :(
I haven't cracked it yet on youtube still trying
@@RedefineGamedev Yeah youtube can seem pretty harsh sometimes lol
cool delivery
Thanks for sharing, it's helpful to see your experience and tips. I am trying to build an audience for my UA-cam channel where i share my journey to create my visual novel game and art making ☺️
It's about the player enjoying the game, it's not graphics or anything it's fun and playability.
great video
Great advice. 👍
Thanks for intel Blekoh, I'm just starting down this road and it's all a bit daunting.
Good luck! 👈🏻👈🏻🤖
Thanks man!
Personally none of these games you released would appeal to me and possibly the masses, not to be rude... But on the surface they appear too simplistic, and game ideas tbh are not all that interesting.
We live in the age of shiny thing syndrome and high end graphics most games are judged by the art before even gameplay is considered..
As for free marketing, look into Twitter to get your game trending on some popular game dev hashtags. Other UA-camrs will also do a spotlight if the game looks fun or breaks new grounds.
yo there ! I made a metroidvania game , "Dora Diginoid"
How long do you consider enough time to publish the game once the Steam page is launched? Thanks for the video
I think at least 2 months but ideally I think having it up for about 4-6 months and during that time drive people to your page through social media stuff
Dude, that's many times better than my game. I released Bugged Out on Steam about a month ago, my total revenue to date was only $15.
Maybe do more marketing, bro.
If I had the money to afford internet (I don't have any at home) I would stream my game creation, it's a 3D rpg with a diablo like movement system. I find I sometimes go a day or two without doing anything on it then I'll do a day of work. I just lose motivation so fast without being able to share my progress with people.
Pretty interesting games!
Did most of your wishlists came from social media? What were the other "free ways" you mentioned to market the game that were successful for you?
Good stuff, have definitely made some of the same mistakes as you lol
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Thanks for sharing. This is super interesting. Do you think the advertising helped increase the wishlists and sales at all?
The ads did increase the wishlists/sales but not by an amount that it paid off to use them. I got a lot more wishlists by just having my store page up for a longer period of time (people just clicking from the upcoming games section and also from using the steam curators pre-launch to get a few people to talk about the game) and for wishlists when you launch the game it sends out an email to tell the person your game is launched which has a pretty good conversion rate
I'm a full time software developer, but I do want to make a game. I made an OpenGL game back about 13 years ago in a graphics class at college. If I do get a game made, I'd consider trying to get ahold of some UA-camrs that make a living off recording themselves play games and giving them a free copy. But my main concern about making a game to sell its that I know nothing about being self employed. No idea how to make a company or if I would even need to make a company. The business side of things is what has made me not seriously consider doing it. Any advice on that end of things? I'm in the USA by the way. In Texas.
Business wise you have a few options. If you want to make a “real” business most peoples first choices would probably be an LLC, they are easy to set up and are good at protecting you from your business liability wise.
If you just want to make and sell indie games, by far the easiest company type would be a Sole Proprietorship, as long as you don’t have any employees this is probably the easiest one to file taxes for, you generally don’t have to register anything depending on states and your company is automatically just your name. So you could probably just sign up on steams developer portal, and under taxes choose sole proprietorship, use your name and tax info and you’re done. Protection wise they aren’t as good though (Your company is essentially yourself so if your company gets sued you can become liable)
Those two would probably be the ones to go for. Also disclaimer I’m not a tax professional or real business person hah.
As far as making a living. This is probably every indie devs dream, it’s not unachievable but I would probably start first by making a small indie game and going through the process to sell it on something like steam before just jumping full on into it
@@Blekoh Thanks for the info. I'm a bit far from having a game complete. I'm still going through Vulkan tutorials. The game I made years ago was just OpenGL, but after reading up on it, I think I'd rather go with Vulkan. I have plenty of ideas rattling around in my brain though. I just need to force myself to sit and code even if I don't feel like it after coding at work all day.
Thanks you so much
before serious it, i chose freemium model to get audience and invest the system. it's great to build audience and get some money
Curious, how are you getting these wishlists?
I used to stream regularly so many of them came from that, the others mostly came from steam. When you launch a steam store page, the closer your release date is the higher up in rankings you show up in steam’s upcoming games list. So a lot of wishlists came days before I released the games :)
You might want to check out Chris Zukowski. He has several courses for indie game marketing and writes a lot on the subject. I think his website is called how to market an indie game
I made a Goku/Pikachu game. It was FUN making a video for it and enjoying creating the game!
Why is the first week such a big slice of the total revenue of a game? I read that week one tends to comprise 20% of all revenue of the entire first year. Does the Steam search show the game a lot more in the first week of launch?
The first week is usually the biggest week for a few reasons.
1.) All the people that wishlisted the game get an email telling them the game was released so you get some purchases from them
2.) Steam pushes out the game in the different lists for recently released games and different search results
3.) Leading up to the release the game is featured in the upcoming games list which you generally start getting wishlists from being there
4.) You tell all your friends you released a game and they pity buy it lol
There’s probably more but those are some of the reasons 👈🏻👈🏻🤖
@@Blekoh Thanks a lot for the info. I kind of figured the Steam algorithm shows new games. Wasn't aware of the others.
Great business man
Can you do speed run of Kokoro ultimate its a fighter indie game just launched on steam. My best time was 19 min to beat story.
Question tho bro, why do you sell them why don’t you just keep it and win money from it every month or am I wrong.
in which programming languages did you make these games?
They were made in Game Maker Studio but I use Godot for all my current projects
How do you build a wish list for free? only social media posts? Can you share what was successful for you?
I think it was easier to build wishlists a few years ago. It seems harder now more than ever, I would probably say the biggest boost to wishlists would be to sign up for a Steam Next Fest when your game is ready to be played as a demo (and released as close as possible to the next fest date). Don't follow Steam's guidelines for streaming, stream at 720p with 2000-3000 bitrate since their servers get hammered during Next Fest and all other dev streams will lag during Next Fest and won't work, a lower quality stream is better than none at all. Make your two stream slots the best you possibly can (expect 1000-2000 concurrent viewers if you have a good stream). Stream as much as you can for the entire Next Fest (Even if it isn't part of your stream slot time).
Other people on youtube/social media generally will build their wishlists over years which works too but if you are trying to develop a game within a year its a lot harder.
This might be a hot take but I don't feel like devlogs work (they generally will just advertise your game to other devs and devs don't buy games) the only exception is if you get lucky with the algorithm so sometimes people will get like 20k subs on their channel with a single devlog (or your devlog lasts years which seems to work ok too).
@@Blekoh thank you for your great answer
is funny how everyone else get's paid except for the developer the one who actually made the game! the system is clearly broken and design to keep you broke!
I made a game called Drop one NPC to another
Hmm, your calculations are not exactly correct. First steam takes 30%. Then returns/charge backs and vat means you lose another 20% give or take. So if your gross revenue is $100, you end up with 100*0.7*0.8 = $56.
In the video I said I didn’t include tax since it depends on where people live (Our sales tax in the USA is different than European countries) also depending on the currency people used it costs a different amount. But anyway for the exact amount after all taxes and everything as reported by steam:
Kiro: $218 USD
Beardy: $237 USD
(The outcome is the same, they aren’t good lol)
@@Blekoh Ah, I see! Still pretty decent sums you've made there!
i think its good idea to buy youtuber to play the game
Always interesting to see real numbers! It's kind of sad to see that it's so hard for indie devs to make a living from games. (Universal Basic Income when???)
I've also heard that it takes 10 reviews for Steam to really show your game to people, so maybe once you reach those 10 reviews sales are going to go up? Idk though, Thanks for sharing! :)
It takes 10 reviews for steam to decide if it is a positive or negative game (based on those 10 ratings). My game KIRO reached that and made positive and it definitely sells a lot more copies haha
@@Blekoh ah okay, well, glad it sells now better :)
This isn't meant to be an insult to the dev here, but both those games look very unpolished compared to higher selling indie games. The UI of the second game literally uses some kind of Arial looking font. The developer might have had content and put in hours, but the quality reflected in the sales totally makes sense. So I don't really understand why it's sad to see that it takes more than that to make sales
@@nandanvinjamury I agree with your UI point but how is this relevant to the comment lol
@@TheWeen344 I was addressing the original comment's first point: "it's kind of sad to see that it's so hard for indie devs to make a living from games"
Alright so let's get to the basics.
It's not very profitable, as there is probably gonna be very little demand.
You're gonna need to attract attention to the game, this is done through advertising, either advertising through someone else or through yourself (on your UA-cam channel, for example)
Thats why popular youtubers are able to make a good amount of money from creating products, as they already have a way to advertise it and an audience.
other factors need to be considered too, players don't treat all games equally, the games they play must be up to standards in every way possible.
#6 Dont hide your game..
I was going to check out the game. but there is no link or any information in the description or your channel. now that there is too much effort for me to look it up..
The mechanics of the Strong Arm game but the graphics make it seem like a less quality game than it is. Maybe it would have been better to get help with graphics nicer 🤷♂️unsolicited advice from someone who never shipped a game
What is meant by indie??
Well for my case I just make games by myself (as an individual) but in general it just means a game made by an individual or small team usually without funding and/or a publisher
@@Blekoh ohkk thanks for explaining ✨
it is so hard, i can't make it
W8, you need to pay 100 buck EVERY game published on steam?
Yep, I normally wait until I am close to being done with my game before I pay the fee 🤖
@@Blekoh well, guess there goes my expectation to publish my game on steam... 100 USD is too much money in my country lol
@@canalelsonunes where r u from,,,,me India
damn 100 bucks profit wow(turkish)
in hte past in whatever 2006 till 2013 i made a lot of music for fun .. only paid me like 200 dollar.. ...
I tell this because i got lucky i dont have to work because of parents and stuff but life is hardcore.
Someone who learn a bit and become dentis make lik 200k a year just doing what they love.. makes no sense doesnt it I gotr lucky i get a base income too
Alright dewds
those 100€/$ that steam now askes is stupid, if I'm not mistaken you have to pay for every single game... the older system was way better for devs, this is just good for actually big companies... to bad bots make valve opted out for a money transaction to verify insted of just blocking the bots accounts -.-
i think a price for 1 game was high.
u can make 3d games for a great income
Are you studson studios? I feel like u are…
Not 1 mil like on the thumbnail bro
damn this is just depressing
lol that arm is huge...hahhahahah
Time is money man. If you spent 1 hour every day for a year, that's 365 hours of development time. You probably want to give yourself a good hourly rate of $50-60. That means you start making 'profit' after your game makes at least $18.250. Everything below that is basically a loss.
Yeah It would definitely be cool to make a livable wage making games. For now I just make money at my normal software engineering job and do game development as a hobby. I try not to think of not making money on a game as a loss because each game I make I learn a lot about what will work in the future and what won’t 👈🏻👈🏻🤖 (copium)
@@Blekoh Ah nice, I'm in the same boat :). In that case it's nice to get extra money. And with each game, you learn what works indeed. So maybe your third game will make $1000. And the fourth $10.000. Most important thing is that you enjoy making them!
Don't forget the taxes at 15.3% before the IRS throws you in Federal Pound you in the ass facility.
$7 for this? Yikes
I know people don't like to hear this, but a video game is a product just like anything else you would sell. You have to be good at marketing if you're in it for profit, there's no way around it other than sheer luck.
What accent is this?
Mine 👈🏻👈🏻🤖
But yeah I’m from the east coast USA not really sure I have a specific accent though lol
American
The thumbnail is very misleading
Bro you serious why are you telling us about your games which are 2d and not even played these days
you'd be surprised how many people play 2d games
@@Vizzu sometimes people can't see past their own nose.
Totally agreed, 2d games have their place and aren't going away anytime soon and are often a lot more challenging to make than 3d.
Obvious troll here.
Quick Question: Are you from 1993?
great video