Can I get RICH WITH VIDEO GAMES? // A look at Video Game Revenue data

The most asked questions with game development are always related to money: How much money can you make with a game? Can you make a living as a game developer? Can I get rich with video games? Et cetera.

In this video I will take a look at video game revenue data and see how much money do indie games make. We will get an answer to "can you make a living with games?" and if getting rich with video games is possible.

⚔️ Mortal Glory 2: https://store.steampowered.com/app/22...
⚔️ Chambers of Devious Design: https://store.steampowered.com/app/16...
⚔️ Mortal Glory: https://store.steampowered.com/app/10...
🧙 Chat on Discord:   / discord  
⭐ Follow me on Twitter:   / redbeakgames  
💎 Patreon - Support to gain perks:   / redbeakgames  

How much does it cost to make a game? // List of game development costs:    • How much does it cost to make a game?...  

0:00 Intro
1:06 Data on video game revenue

A site called Video Game Insights (https://vginsights.com/steam-analytics) has collected data from Steam of 50000 games and they have made some earnings estimates based on the price and the number of reviews each game has. This data is not the full truth, but gives a good overall understanding of the numbers.

If we look at the data, we can see that the 50th percentile is around 4000 dollars. What this means is that half of all the games make less than 4000 dollars during their lifetime.

If we look at other percentiles we can see that 20 percent of all the games make less than 60 dollars during their lifetime. Then if we go to the other end, we can see that 20 percent of the top earning games make more than 60 thousand dollars during their lifetime. Meanwhile, the top 1% of games on Steam make more than 19 million dollars each.

This was all the games on Steam. Meaning that it includes indie games, but also big games made by triple A studios. Luckily we can filter the data so that we are only looking at self-published indie games.

If we look at the 50th percentile now, it says that half of the indie games make less than 3000 dollars during their lifetime instead of the 4000 dollars when we were looking at all games. The bottom 20% is not affected much. The top 20% of self-published indie games makes more than 32 thousand. Ouch. Almost half of what it was for all games.

We can also filter free games out of the data since they drag the numbers down quite a bit (the data does not include IAP). Looking a bit better now. 50% of self-published indie games with a price tag make more than 5000 dollars. The bottom 20% make less than 700 dollars and the top 20% make more than 48 thousand dollars.

Let’s add one more filter to the data. We only want to make good games so let’s only look at the games that have a rating score of 70 or more. Getting better! More than 8000 dollar earnings for half of the games. And more than 100 thousand dollars for almost all games in the top 20%.

With these numbers you need to note that they are gross sales. To get what the developer makes, you need to deduct a lot of costs. In a Gamasutra article by Danny Weinbaum, he came up with an average multiplier of 0.38. This means that for every dollar sold, the developer gets 38 cents.

If we take the median value of 8000 dollars we looked at earlier, this would mean that the developer gets around 3000 dollars.


7:14 Real-life examples

KingSim, a 8-bit kingdom simulator that was released May 2020 on Steam. The solo creator of the game recently made a YouTube video revealing that the game has sold 18 thousand dollars in six months.

Neversong, a hand-drawn action adventure that was released in May of 2020 on Steam. The creator revealed on a YouTube video that the game had made 90 thousand dollars in 6 months. The game is also available on other platforms, but that sum does not include the revenue from them.

Starcom: Nexus, an action RPG set in space that was released in December of 2019 on Steam. The solo creator of the game revealed in a Gamasutra article that the game had sold almost 30 thousand copies in six months, bringing in a revenue of 460 thousand dollars.

Toast Time, an arcade game fueled with British humor. The game was originally released in 2012 on Android and later introduced to other platforms also. The creator recently made a reddit post revealing that the game has made 44 thousand dollars over its lifetime.

Curious Expedition, a roguelike expedition game originally released in 2014. One of the two creators made a blog post last summer, revealing that the game had sold 173 thousand copies between 2014 and 2019, bringing in a total revenue of around 1.6 million dollars. This sum also does not include revenue they got from a humble bundle deal.

Mortal Glory, a tactical gladiator roguelike game made by me and released January 2020... Check out my video on it:    • How much Money my Game made in 1 year...