I suppose that when your previous employer has over 3B users (FB alone, not even counting IG and WA and whatever else they have going on), 200k might seem like a small number of people :P
But I agree. OP, 200k is a hugely respectable number for a game or any piece of software for that matter. I’d be happy if 200 people used any of mine, never mind the k :p Congrats! :)
Hey, Meta has something like 67k employees for those 3.35 billion users (for simple stats I could find), and thats. That's 50k users to an employee. I think this dev is doing quite well by those standards. :)
That article is 5 years old. Sadly the article lacks a date, but you can tell because it claims Steam is 15 years old, when it had its 22 anniversary last year.
Next that 7M number is for self-published games. Aka, games where the dev is listed as the publisher. OP has Raw Fury as his publisher. Next Raw Fury posted their contract publically a while ago: it is a pretty harsh contract. 50/50 split, but there is a profit ratio baked into the recoup which is super odd. If OP had held off, did his own marketing for a bit, then negotiated with publishers once he had traction, he might have gotten a better deal.
The challenge for Indie devs with publishers is how the good publishers ask a pretty high take. Meanwhile the good deals come from new publishers with poor or no track record. Personally we signed with Hooded Horse which publically offers better deals and is highly effective. The trade off being Hooded Horse is famously quite selective.
Thus honestly: self publishing is the default-best choice. We did that for our last game and effectively replaced a publisher by just spending a bunch on marketing.
If an article has no visible date, I often just check the source of the document, because most of these blogs use a generic CMS that puts the date in the code anyways.
Yeah I failed to find a date but figured it wouldn't be severely out of date. If anything, that would mean the thresholds would get lower and Steam games more games being submitted. It's a
>Next that 7M number is for self-published games. Aka, games where the dev is listed as the publisher.
That's fair, I can conflate "indie" in the colloquial sense with "indie" in the traditional one. I suppose 1% would be a sttretch if competing with any game with a publisher (indie label or AAA).
>it is a pretty harsh contract. 50/50 split, but there is a profit ratio baked into the recoup which is super odd. If OP had held off, did his own marketing for a bit, then negotiated with publishers once he had traction, he might have gotten a better deal.
Yeah, I figured the article was referring to gross revenue after steam's cut. Itd be nearly impossible to truly guess at all the other cuts taken out from publishers, tools, and labor. Money made =/= money in your pocket.
>Thus honestly: self publishing is the default-best choice. We did that for our last game and effectively replaced a publisher by just spending a bunch on marketing.
It's still a tough choice, and really comes down to the person. There's a lot of technical and artistic people out there that can make a high quality game but can't sell water in a desert. If money is your primary goal, it may still be worth giving up 50,70+% just so people know your game exists to begin with. From there, the momentum should either encourage to self-publish next time or lets you seek a better deal. MArketing also tends to be one of those areas where many people feel they can do it themselves and then completely corner themselves in the end (as a certain YC startup recently learned).
I think the true best choice is self-publish, but partner up with someone who knows how to sell (assuming you're getting great feedback on your game. Can't polish a turd). A singular media marketer shouldn't ask anything close to what a "good" publisher will offer.
But I agree. OP, 200k is a hugely respectable number for a game or any piece of software for that matter. I’d be happy if 200 people used any of mine, never mind the k :p Congrats! :)