I wanted to make a post that shows how much I make as a developer of 2 tiny, not very successful indie games. This information is interesting to me and is something I would have loved to have been able to read before making my games, so I am hoping it can be helpful for other devs too.
In my opinion, selling games isn't something that can be boiled down to a science. Two games can be made in the same amount of time, and with the same amount of effort, but if one game strikes a cord with people it's going to do better. You can't just follow a checklist to guarantee a certain amount of sales. Yeah, there are things you can do to help, but at the end of the day, if your game doesn't hit the right note with the right people nothing else is going to matter. And that "note" could be one of a million things. It's very hard to predict. Market research can help with this sure, but that's outside of my skill set so I won't be going into that here.
So with that in mind, here are links to my 2 games so that you can judge for yourself the quality of games this post is based off.
First, my newest game: Dungeon Lad
And then my first game: Asteroids... But Roguelite
Disclaimer
I am not good at this. This isn't meant to be a guide. I'm just showing what I do to make roughly $75 a month off 2 tiny, not very popular games.
Total Sales
First, lets look at total sales I've made as a developer: My asteroids game came out September 21st, 2020. Since then I have sold a total of 441 copies of my games, totaling $1,862. Note that this does not include steams 30%, various taxes, charge backs, etc. My take home has been less than this.
The breakdown looks like:
Asteroids: 304 copies for $960
Dungeon Lad: 137 copies for $902
Keep in mind Asteroids has been out for roughly 18 months longer. Also that entire time Asteroids has been priced at $4.99 while Dunegon Lad is $9.99
My Launch Strategy
I'm not qualified to tell you how to launch a game. But I can tell you what I did. First off, I don't really market my games. This is STUPID on my part. But I make games for fun. Marketing isn't fun. So I don't do it. I would make more money if I did, but I'm not really trying to live off my games. It sounds too stressful.
What I do spend a lot of energy on, is making sure the game gets 10 positive reviews as quickly as possible at launch. Steam DOES NOT show your game to random people until you get 10 positive reviews. I've tweeted this a ton, as have other devs. Get 10 positive reviews ASAP.
My strategy here is to literally guilt my friends into buying the game and leaving a positive review. I am probably very annoying to be friends with when I launch a game, but if you want your game to even have a chance, you need those 10 reviews. Here are some things that DO NOT work.
- Gifting keys do not count towards your 10 reviews.
- Gifting the game through Steam, even from a non dev account, will not count towards your 10 reviews.
You need the friend to buy the game with money on their own account, play it (or let it run) for like an hour, and then write up a positive review. I know this sounds scammy, but trust me. The entire Steam store front is a scam for indie devs, take any advantage you can get. I have literally venmo'd friends so they could buy my game at launch without spending their own money. It's worth it.
Sale Strategy
Basically, my current strategy with selling these games is to just discount them down as often as possible. Nearly ALL of my sales come from when they are discounted.
Steam allows you to put your games on sale every 28 days. So I put them on sale EVERY 28 DAYS! This 28 day timer is not effected by the big Steam sales, like the summer or winter ones. That being said, I never really sell many copies during those. I assume because there are too many better games on sale and my games get buried, but that's just a guess.
Numbers:
In September both of my games were on sale form the 5th to the 11th. In that span, I sold 29 copies. I sold 7 copies the rest of the month combined.
In October both of my games were on sale from the 10th to the 17th. In that span, I sold 24 copies. I only sold 2 copies the rest of the month combined.
You can go back to any month in the last year and the numbers are right around the same. If you are a small game that doesn't really do any marketing like me, discounts is where the sales happen.
Finding a discount %
Honestly, no idea. Sorry, haha. For my $10 and $5 game, the magic number seems to be 60%. I found that number via trial and error. I think 60% happens to put my one game under $5 and the other under $3, but thats just a guess. Play around with the numbers until you find what works for you and then just make sure you put your games on sale as often as Stream allows you to at that price.
Pricing
I launched my first game at $5 thinking that was a fair price. I still believe that. The problem is, it almost never sells at that amount, as you can see above. I believe the price difference from $4.99 to $2.99 isn't actually effecting many people's decisions on if they want to buy that game or not. I think that putting it on a "deep" discount simply puts the game in front of more people. If that's true, you need to price your game a bit higher than you think it's worth.
My second game is priced at $9.99. Honestly, thats a bit high. But it doesn't matter, since as a tiny game, no one really sees it when it's full price anyways. But now I can discount it down to $4, which is close to a fair price (in my mind its a $5 game), and people will actually see it and buy it.
Price your game higher than you think it's worth knowing that most of it's page views are going to come from sales (if you don't do much marketing like me).
Wrap Up
So in summary, I have 2 games that I spent 4 & 6 months on making each. Now that they have been out for a while, I put them both on a deep discount every 28 days. This leads to me making roughly $75 a month off my games. Not enough to live off, but it's enough that I can keep spending money on making more games, which is all I want. In theory, if I just kept making small games, at some point I could get a livable wage doing this. Also, the more games you ship, the better chance you have of making one that actually makes a decent amount of money. Hits are rare, so the more the games you make the more chance you have of hitting one. And the more games you make, the better you are going to get at making games, probably.
Please let me know if there are anymore numbers I could give that would be helpful or if you have any other questions.