by this standard, sadly, I think the number of indie games ever made numbers in the single digits
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Animation Lead on Wanderstop! She/Her & Transgenderrific! Past: Radial Games, Gaslamp Games
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in reply to @MOOMANiBE's post:
just gonna ballpark: a team of 30 people (inc media and admin people), game sold for $30
30% of each sale goes to steam
17.5% of each sale is business tax (Australia)
10% GST (Australia)
so each person gets 47.5¢/sale. 1m sales, thats $475,000.
if they spent 4 years on the game, that's a $125k salary (before tax). if they spent less time they'd get more per year.
$475,000 would pay off my mortgage, but wouldn't have been able to buy my place outright.
while this aspect is true, I'm referring to some degree more to the fact that
- profit sharing is incredibly rare in indie
- even among companies that do profit sharing, they almost never include contractors, which means "everyone" who worked on the game is not getting that money
- the smallest companies tend to rely the most on low-paid contractors (speaking from experience), leaving us with swathes of personal passion project games and "solo devs" who barely credit, let alone pay, the people who helped make them rich
i hadn't even thought that far - even in the ideal scenario (perfect sharing) the likely outcome is "gets the equivalent of a few years of salary for a few years of work" not "gets rich"
the only game I can think of that would be "completely solo Dev got rich" would be Banished's developer "Luke from Shining Rock Studios"?
this definition assumes everyone works for free during development and then gets an even split of sales after launch, which is... interesting. i'm sure some people are able to do that
my freelancers have to pay rent, so i'm paying them! i guess i'm not indie
I briefly signed on a game that was profit share only back in the day but then it never came out so everyone made 0 dollars lol
I am being silly in this post, but this is an uncharitable reading. I've paid my collaborators up front, and then when that money is recouped, their rev share kicks in. I didn't want them to share the risk with me, but I'm happy they're currently sharing in the (moderate) success.
Is it rare in the industry? Yeah, who cares, I can be an idealist. Is it bad business? Probably, I don't think being indie has anything to do with being good at business.
It's certainly better practice than a number of situations I can name where certain popular 1-2 person game devs fired the artists who helped define the games they made once they got enough money to "move up in the world". I've heard so many stories from embittered contractors in the very small indie space about how disposably they're treated. Revshare on hugely successful games should be more common, but it absolutely isn't.
Yeah, it sucks! I also do contract work! That is why I wrote an aspirational definition, not an accurate one