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Over $700k selling a premium mobile game

332 points by cdvonstinkpot 11y ago

kelukelugames 11y ago
Caveat: The game capitalizes on existing IP. He ported a well-liked browser game into iOS. The games he created himself are not doing as well.
- inDigiNeous 11y ago
  According to this: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-dark-room-the-best-selling-game-that-no-one-can-explain http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-dark-room-the-best-... He worked on this together with the original creator.
  - deelowe 11y ago
    And split the revenue.
WA 11y ago
Wait, you need to ask Apple to have your app featured? This is a really insightful post, but at the same time, I don't even want to bother with all the Do's and Don'ts. See, I don't develop games. I have a total niche app product and Apple does exactly zero things for me and still wants 30%. I even drive the people to the app store through my website. Exposure? No. Payment handling? Could do this myself. New users? Not really. Luckily, my web app makes 10x more money than the stupid app.
- clamprecht 11y ago
  What is your app?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - WA 11y ago
    Sorry, I won't give the actual name. It's a B2C app in the health section and requires quite a bit of knowledge by its users. So, this basically disqualifies it as ever being featured, because the users need to be a bit more sophisticated than average joe browsing the category page in the App Store.
    - paulpauper 11y ago
      med school app?
    - alawrence 11y ago
      Any tips on following a similar path to creating profitable apps?
- qzervaas 11y ago
  The post is almost entirely true for non-games too. I have a successful app and these are the exact things Apple want. Also, like he said, don't complain, just deal with it. Saying they do nothing for you isn't entirely true, or you wouldn't have an app on the App Store.
  - WA 11y ago
    I have an app in the App Store, mostly because my users want one. It does make a bit of money, but development has stalled and is somewhat subsidized by my SaaS. If there was only the app and not the website, it would not be economically feasible. I'm not complaining, but stating that I'm not happy with how things go. The only reason why it's "acceptable" to give Apple 30% is because they're the only game in town. If I gave another third party 30%, they surely had to bring a bit more to the table than what Apple is offering me (in my specific situation with a niche app). If everybody shuts up, nothing will ever change – although expressing dissatisfaction probably won't change much either I guess.
    - jacalata 11y ago
      If you had only the website and not an app, would that be economically feasible?
- jkirsteins 11y ago
  > Apple does exactly zero things for me and still wants 30% It gives you access to its customers. That's not a bad deal for many.
  - WA 11y ago
    No, as I said before: I actually bring most customers myself. Most buys happen because they find my website through Google first and then decide to buy the app. See sibling posting: Users need some kind of sophistication to use it successfully.
    - tamana 11y ago
      Can you still your service on your website, and publish a free companion app in the app store?
- rogerbinns 11y ago
  > ... Apple does exactly zero things for me and still wants 30% ... I'll bite. The Romans, err I mean Apple have done nothing, except at least these: * Maintains a user database including authentication, plus all the support costs (lost password support is very high) * Payment handling (you dismiss it, but no one does it for free) including keeping up with tax authorities and legal systems in much of the world * Almost unlimited (re)downloads for users to a reasonable number of devices. Bandwidth is cheap but not free. * Backup and restore for application data. (You may not use it, but that functionality is available to apps without extra fees.) * A curated walled garden including a review process. I'm sure your app is fine, but Apple keeping the dregs out and avoiding the place turning into a cesspool means users can be more confident about the apps and that halo effect helps all apps in the store. * Mechanisms to extend your app such as IAP, and an advertising solution etc * Access to a large user base, with reasonably fair rules that everyone has play by * They make all the above work together The case can be made that the benefits used vary by app, but in aggregate it isn't an unreasonable amount for them to charge. It is worth noting that competitors haven't done anything substantially different.
  - aianus 11y ago
    > It is worth noting that competitors haven't done anything substantially different. I can download an .apk directly from a developer if Google doesn't want to host it on the app store. I've done this, for example, with the Betfair app. That's a pretty huge difference.
    - rogerbinns 11y ago
      You are talking about a difference in platforms, not in stores and services they provide. Pretty much all the app stores on all the platforms charge 30%. They also offer substantially the same services.
  - WA 11y ago
    Yes, you're right generally speaking. But I'm just pointing out that for me(!) with a niche app(!) it doesn't work out and I need nothing of the stuff you mentioned. Payments? PayPal and Stripe are reasonably priced and compete with each other. This makes prices reasonable. Maybe I can make my point more clear by saying what I expect from Apple: Let me publish an app and don't tell me how to run my business. I want to put up an app in store that uses external payments. Apple doesn't want this. Well, kind of, sort of. The App Store Guidelines section 11 are pretty clear on what Apple expects: Don't charge people outside of the App Store, because we want a share of that pie. And if you do, we ain't gonna like it. We might approve your app, we might not. We might change our mind, too. Depends on how explicit you're selling your stuff. And for a long time, it was simply not possible to offer apps that are paid for outside the App Store. And now, it's still very vague. You have to offer an app that also works without requiring a paid account. Anyways, thanks for the input. I take this discussion to reconsider my position and think of a way how I can make this work. I must admit that Apple changed the rules over the recent months a bit. It's maybe a bit more flexible now.
alc90 11y ago
Really insightful post, thanks for sharing. It's been a while since I've seen this kind of success stories from indie developers. I feel like there's a trend right now that is focused more on telling how bad the App store is and how screwed you are if you're developing mobile apps/games.
tsunamifury 11y ago
Even the lucky few who get outsized returns find it unsustainable...
- mdorazio 11y ago
  Exactly this. The writeup is excellent, but also shows exactly how hit-driven the app market is. The dev made one game (based on already-successful IP) that generated a lot of revenue, and then the subsequent games are only modestly successful. I think one of the big "do's" from the article is very good advice: don't spend huge amounts of time working on an app and expect it to provide a return. The dev says 2 months of part-time work should be a target, and that seems about right to me as well. Beyond that you're just asking for negative returns if you value your time highly.
  - forgetsusername 11y ago
    >The dev made one game (based on already-successful IP) that generated a lot of revenue, and then the subsequent games are only modestly successful. And now is going write a book and probably go on to become an "expert" and do consultation on how to successfully repeat a process that they themselves couldn't repeat in practice. The transparency and information in the post is awesome, but I don't see any systematic path to success here, in what is the crap-shoot of the App Store. One-hit-wonders are everywhere.
- trcollinson 11y ago
  That's not an entirely fair assessment, at least in this case. He ported a popular Web game with about 3 hours of content to an iOS game. He made about $700,000 gross on that. He then followed up with a few partial attempts at similar games that were either a) built to be exceptionally hard (The Ensign) or b) unfinished and barely playable (A Noble Circle). I'd say the unsustainable part for him is his entire (lack of) business plan. It shows very little other than the fact that very little sticks when you throw random things at a wall.
jiiam 11y ago
Extremely helpful post: insightful and inspiring. This author's comment also underlines the modern situation of the self employed: "I'm a single person LLC with practically zero expenses (I paid a whopping $3k for my MacBook and made $700k), so Uncle Sam is going to get his money. I save a bit based on marginal tax rates, but pretty much I'm SOL because the tax system doesn't understand how a single guy can make so much."
- brianwawok 11y ago
  He could have done an S Corp or something to keep more of the profits in the business and avoid paying personal income taxes on all of it, no? Depends on long term play I guess.
  - Scirra_Tom 11y ago
    When you want to draw the profits as salary you'd be taxed on it anyway?
    - ihsw 11y ago
      He can do things with it before giving himself a salary, things that can be taxed less.
      - ryanwaggoner 11y ago
        Not really. I'm not aware of any deductions that he could take as an S-Corp that he couldn't take as sole proprietor or LLC.
      - Scirra_Tom 11y ago
        Such as?
        defen 11y ago
        Pay people to create art / music / assets for his next game?
hardwaresofton 11y ago
Despite getting very close to the best possible case for an iOS game (#1 on app store for a more than 0 days), am I the only one that is pretty dissapointed at how he was compensated? He didn't actually make $700k -- after Apple took theirs, and the gov't took theirs, he was left with ~$150K in his most successful year... I guess the freedom to do nothing while your app just rakes in money is great, but it seems like the probability of hitting this case is very low, and a stable job (though he would have possibly not liked the monotony) would have made him much more money. All this said, I'm about to strike out on my own with a one man LLC, so as others have said, this information is golden. [EDIT] - Many have pointed out that I missed the ~$280K that he gave to his partner (the content creator) -- so in his most successful year, he stood to make (had he been truly solo) ~$430K, which actually is pretty substantial, for a one time effort... But what is the probability of someone's iPhone game getting to #1 on the app store?
- Scirra_Tom 11y ago
  > after Apple took theirs, and the gov't took theirs, he was left with ~$150K in his most successful year... You've left off the biggest deduction, $280,000 to his partner. 3x more than he paid to the government in taxation.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  You've left out the 276,500 that the owner of the content got (about 1/3 of the revenue).
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Well, let's just say that I think if you look at the top 10% of salaries in this industry, compared to other industries, it's probably not great. Note I'm talking about salaries of people, not Supercell's income. i.e. if you look at the top 10% earning doctors, lawyers, musicians etc, I don't expect the app store to look great. And if you look at the median, the app store will likely be very, very substantially subpar. And if you look at the bottom 10%, it's probably a complete joke. All in all, I don't think the app store is an interesting place anymore for the average dev. But that's probably true of most entrepreneurs I feel. It's so hard to compete with big businesses, that you're either in a niche they can't conquer, doing something special, or you're losing to them. It's either great, or shit, and the great is a tiny percentage.
JabavuAdams 11y ago
Thanks to the author for sharing this info. That said, the app's downloads peaked in 2014, which was a different App Store.
philliphaydon 11y ago
All that tax...
- malchow 11y ago
  Obscene, isn't it? He could have sent a kid to college for the amount of tax he paid.
  - paulpauper 11y ago
    The tax system punishes people who make wealth quickly (windfalls) and have to pay at the highest bracket, versus individuals who earns the same amount of money but more slowly and pay at a lower bracket.
    - vacri 11y ago
      I think most of us can live with the tax system not being optimised for the few individuals that strike it lucky in one year and then do not much at all for the next half-decade.
      - tamana 11y ago
        Any sympathy for the half decade they spend toiling for no income before they strike it lucky?
        vacri 11y ago
        Why stop there? Why not rate taxes against lifetime earnings? That'd be great for me - I was paid below average wage for most of my working life.
      - taneq 11y ago
        The issue is not with people who strike it lucky in one year, the issue is people who invest in multi-year projects and then receive the payoff in a short time. There needs to be some way of being taxed over the total time spent on a project, rather than the time spent receiving a cheque at the end.
bsamuels 11y ago
only tangentially related, but I think it's screwed up that apple can take a 30% cut of absolutely all the money moving through the ios platform and not have an antitrust suite brought against them if microsoft can get screwed by the FTC for bundling IE with windows, why can't apple get screwed for only allowing app store apps on their devices?
- colechristensen 11y ago
  There are a lot of things a company can't do when they're a monopoly that non-monopoly companies can. Microsoft was abusing retailers and system builders because those vendors didn't have an alternative option. I agree the 30% is atrocious, but not likely illegal.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    This explanation is circular. Microsoft had a legally determined monopoly, not a real actual market monopoly where no one else could participate in the market. For instance, Apple made computers that were such sufficient substitutes for Windows computers that Microsoft chose to produce a version of one of the their core products for use on Apple computers.
  - Steko 11y ago
    30% on a $0.99 game where apple is eating the credit card costs along with hosting, making sure the store isn't overwhelmed with spam and malware and bringing millions of eager paying customers to your table hardly seems atrocious.
    - colechristensen 11y ago
      I refuse to believe it's anything but a cash cow for Apple. That 30% cut got them 6 billion dollars in 2015.
      - Steko 11y ago
        Which means they made $14 billion for developers. Wal-Mart made $130 billion in profits in 2015 on $486 billion revenue, 27%. This is how stores work.
paulpauper 11y ago
The problem is the odds of such success are slim. There are too may apps, too many developers, not enough eyeballs. But good for him though, and very inspiring and informative. I think easier money can be made with buying deep in the money call options on 3x versions of the S&P 500 and the bond market, which is what I and my dad have been doing for awhile with success. Don't need coding skills or luck to make money with the S& 500
- misiti3780 11y ago
  this sounds interesting - can you provide some more details?
- misiti3780 11y ago
  are you talking about SPXL ?
smaili 11y ago
Truly a great writeup - I don't think I've ever seen a breakdown in greater detail than this regarding someone's experience building an app. For me personally, this was the most inspiring piece: Publishers are not created equal. It's something I learned very quickly when trying to understand the App Store feature mechanics. If you are Warner Brothers, SquareEnix, Kim Kardashian, King, etc, you get a red carpet to getting featured. You can release whatever trash or shoddy port you want, and you'll get featured. So you have two options, accept this and play by the rules I'm about to lay out, or don't participate.
- giarc 11y ago
  Same goes for Apple's 30% take. You either pay it, or you don't ship an iOS app
  - cylinder 11y ago
    Does anyone want to bet on how many years it will take for Apple App Store to attract antitrust attention from the government? Eventually they will get pressured on this fee.
    - giarc 11y ago
      I don't know. For one, iOS doesn't control the market. Recent stats show iOS at 13.9% share [0]. Second, Google (and presumably others) take the same 30% [1]. As a part time developer that recently dealt with this 30% issue, I hate the fact they require it, but I understand why. Distributing the apps to millions of phones isn't free. 0 - http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp 1 - https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
metaphor 11y ago
Any idea why the OP chopped a clean 33% from gross income to account for income tax? This doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.
- daveguy 11y ago
  I was about to post on this. Either he is misrepresenting his taxes to make for a good story or he had a terrible accountant that had him pay too much in taxes. Contrary to popular (conservative) belief, when you go up to a higher tax bracket you are not taxed on your entire income at that rate. It is only the amount in that bracket that is taxed at the higher rate. His taxes should be $48,663 not $91,245. If he was already making above $183,250 from other income then, yes it would be taxed at that higher rate. Although you can't distinguish between the income that was taxed at a higher or lower rate, so it sounds like he is misrepresenting his tax burden either way. He does mention for the second year that he is "still at 33%" because of other contract work, so it looks like he just wants to over represent the taxes of someone pulling in a certain amount from an app. EDIT: Oh, later in the reddit thread he does mention he "saved a bit based on marginal tax rates". A bit, my ass. He paid about half the 33% he claimed -- $42,000 LESS than the $91,245 claimed based on that income. Saying the other income is the income on which he saved the marginal tax and that he had to pay a full 33% on the app income is just disingenuous.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - pbarnes_1 11y ago
    Yeah, the original post should be edited to reflect actual tax paid.
fsnb 11y ago
45% tax? In Poland I would pay 19% linear tax + $50/month for medical and social insurance in first 2 years, $160/month after 2 years. Nothing more.
- vacri 11y ago
  daveguy below goes through why the 45% tax claim is bogus.
chvid 11y ago
Congratulations on a very nice and innovative piece of work. Articles like these are encouraging but skews the full picture. For a game like this there are hundreds pieces of work with equal cost and complexity that get absolute no downloads in the app store.
spoinkaroo 11y ago
For comparison, the most popular game creator makes over 10 million per day over 4 games, with over 4 billion in revenue per year. This creator is supercell, with Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, Boom Beach and Hay Day Edit - They made 2.5 billion last year with nearly a billion in profit, so they may reach 10 million a day this year.
- animal531 11y ago
  Comparison to the other side, the guy on the bottom end is lucky if he's making any amount and could very well be far into the red every month. More interesting I think is to look at the average, where I very much doubt that the average developer makes anything more than a handful.
transfire 11y ago
I am dumbfounded. This guy grossed 700Gs from a take on Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure)?
kevindeasis 11y ago
He has a pretty good playbook for ios games. Are there other playbooks out there? Like "How to start a startup" by YC
smhanov 11y ago
I make a Saas web application and I still got something from this. I'm going to commit some $$$ and buy some other Saas apps to see what they do right.

332 points by cdvonstinkpot 11y ago

Caveat: The game capitalizes on existing IP. He ported a well-liked browser game into iOS. The games he created himself are not doing as well.

inDigiNeous 11y ago
According to this: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-dark-room-the-best-selling-game-that-no-one-can-explain http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-dark-room-the-best-... He worked on this together with the original creator.
- deelowe 11y ago
  And split the revenue.

WA 11y ago

Wait, you need to ask Apple to have your app featured? This is a really insightful post, but at the same time, I don't even want to bother with all the Do's and Don'ts. See, I don't develop games. I have a total niche app product and Apple does exactly zero things for me and still wants 30%. I even drive the people to the app store through my website. Exposure? No. Payment handling? Could do this myself. New users? Not really. Luckily, my web app makes 10x more money than the stupid app.

clamprecht 11y ago
What is your app?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- WA 11y ago
  Sorry, I won't give the actual name. It's a B2C app in the health section and requires quite a bit of knowledge by its users. So, this basically disqualifies it as ever being featured, because the users need to be a bit more sophisticated than average joe browsing the category page in the App Store.
  - paulpauper 11y ago
    med school app?
  - alawrence 11y ago
    Any tips on following a similar path to creating profitable apps?
qzervaas 11y ago
The post is almost entirely true for non-games too. I have a successful app and these are the exact things Apple want. Also, like he said, don't complain, just deal with it. Saying they do nothing for you isn't entirely true, or you wouldn't have an app on the App Store.
- WA 11y ago
  I have an app in the App Store, mostly because my users want one. It does make a bit of money, but development has stalled and is somewhat subsidized by my SaaS. If there was only the app and not the website, it would not be economically feasible. I'm not complaining, but stating that I'm not happy with how things go. The only reason why it's "acceptable" to give Apple 30% is because they're the only game in town. If I gave another third party 30%, they surely had to bring a bit more to the table than what Apple is offering me (in my specific situation with a niche app). If everybody shuts up, nothing will ever change – although expressing dissatisfaction probably won't change much either I guess.
  - jacalata 11y ago
    If you had only the website and not an app, would that be economically feasible?
jkirsteins 11y ago
> Apple does exactly zero things for me and still wants 30% It gives you access to its customers. That's not a bad deal for many.
- WA 11y ago
  No, as I said before: I actually bring most customers myself. Most buys happen because they find my website through Google first and then decide to buy the app. See sibling posting: Users need some kind of sophistication to use it successfully.
  - tamana 11y ago
    Can you still your service on your website, and publish a free companion app in the app store?
rogerbinns 11y ago
> ... Apple does exactly zero things for me and still wants 30% ... I'll bite. The Romans, err I mean Apple have done nothing, except at least these: * Maintains a user database including authentication, plus all the support costs (lost password support is very high) * Payment handling (you dismiss it, but no one does it for free) including keeping up with tax authorities and legal systems in much of the world * Almost unlimited (re)downloads for users to a reasonable number of devices. Bandwidth is cheap but not free. * Backup and restore for application data. (You may not use it, but that functionality is available to apps without extra fees.) * A curated walled garden including a review process. I'm sure your app is fine, but Apple keeping the dregs out and avoiding the place turning into a cesspool means users can be more confident about the apps and that halo effect helps all apps in the store. * Mechanisms to extend your app such as IAP, and an advertising solution etc * Access to a large user base, with reasonably fair rules that everyone has play by * They make all the above work together The case can be made that the benefits used vary by app, but in aggregate it isn't an unreasonable amount for them to charge. It is worth noting that competitors haven't done anything substantially different.
- aianus 11y ago
  > It is worth noting that competitors haven't done anything substantially different. I can download an .apk directly from a developer if Google doesn't want to host it on the app store. I've done this, for example, with the Betfair app. That's a pretty huge difference.
  - rogerbinns 11y ago
    You are talking about a difference in platforms, not in stores and services they provide. Pretty much all the app stores on all the platforms charge 30%. They also offer substantially the same services.
- WA 11y ago
  Yes, you're right generally speaking. But I'm just pointing out that for me(!) with a niche app(!) it doesn't work out and I need nothing of the stuff you mentioned. Payments? PayPal and Stripe are reasonably priced and compete with each other. This makes prices reasonable. Maybe I can make my point more clear by saying what I expect from Apple: Let me publish an app and don't tell me how to run my business. I want to put up an app in store that uses external payments. Apple doesn't want this. Well, kind of, sort of. The App Store Guidelines section 11 are pretty clear on what Apple expects: Don't charge people outside of the App Store, because we want a share of that pie. And if you do, we ain't gonna like it. We might approve your app, we might not. We might change our mind, too. Depends on how explicit you're selling your stuff. And for a long time, it was simply not possible to offer apps that are paid for outside the App Store. And now, it's still very vague. You have to offer an app that also works without requiring a paid account. Anyways, thanks for the input. I take this discussion to reconsider my position and think of a way how I can make this work. I must admit that Apple changed the rules over the recent months a bit. It's maybe a bit more flexible now.

alc90 11y ago

Really insightful post, thanks for sharing. It's been a while since I've seen this kind of success stories from indie developers. I feel like there's a trend right now that is focused more on telling how bad the App store is and how screwed you are if you're developing mobile apps/games.

tsunamifury 11y ago

Even the lucky few who get outsized returns find it unsustainable...

mdorazio 11y ago
Exactly this. The writeup is excellent, but also shows exactly how hit-driven the app market is. The dev made one game (based on already-successful IP) that generated a lot of revenue, and then the subsequent games are only modestly successful. I think one of the big "do's" from the article is very good advice: don't spend huge amounts of time working on an app and expect it to provide a return. The dev says 2 months of part-time work should be a target, and that seems about right to me as well. Beyond that you're just asking for negative returns if you value your time highly.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >The dev made one game (based on already-successful IP) that generated a lot of revenue, and then the subsequent games are only modestly successful. And now is going write a book and probably go on to become an "expert" and do consultation on how to successfully repeat a process that they themselves couldn't repeat in practice. The transparency and information in the post is awesome, but I don't see any systematic path to success here, in what is the crap-shoot of the App Store. One-hit-wonders are everywhere.
trcollinson 11y ago
That's not an entirely fair assessment, at least in this case. He ported a popular Web game with about 3 hours of content to an iOS game. He made about $700,000 gross on that. He then followed up with a few partial attempts at similar games that were either a) built to be exceptionally hard (The Ensign) or b) unfinished and barely playable (A Noble Circle). I'd say the unsustainable part for him is his entire (lack of) business plan. It shows very little other than the fact that very little sticks when you throw random things at a wall.

jiiam 11y ago

Extremely helpful post: insightful and inspiring. This author's comment also underlines the modern situation of the self employed: "I'm a single person LLC with practically zero expenses (I paid a whopping $3k for my MacBook and made $700k), so Uncle Sam is going to get his money. I save a bit based on marginal tax rates, but pretty much I'm SOL because the tax system doesn't understand how a single guy can make so much."

brianwawok 11y ago
He could have done an S Corp or something to keep more of the profits in the business and avoid paying personal income taxes on all of it, no? Depends on long term play I guess.
- Scirra_Tom 11y ago
  When you want to draw the profits as salary you'd be taxed on it anyway?
  - ihsw 11y ago
    He can do things with it before giving himself a salary, things that can be taxed less.
    - ryanwaggoner 11y ago
      Not really. I'm not aware of any deductions that he could take as an S-Corp that he couldn't take as sole proprietor or LLC.
    - Scirra_Tom 11y ago
      Such as?
      - defen 11y ago
        Pay people to create art / music / assets for his next game?

hardwaresofton 11y ago

Despite getting very close to the best possible case for an iOS game (#1 on app store for a more than 0 days), am I the only one that is pretty dissapointed at how he was compensated? He didn't actually make $700k -- after Apple took theirs, and the gov't took theirs, he was left with ~$150K in his most successful year... I guess the freedom to do nothing while your app just rakes in money is great, but it seems like the probability of hitting this case is very low, and a stable job (though he would have possibly not liked the monotony) would have made him much more money. All this said, I'm about to strike out on my own with a one man LLC, so as others have said, this information is golden. [EDIT] - Many have pointed out that I missed the ~$280K that he gave to his partner (the content creator) -- so in his most successful year, he stood to make (had he been truly solo) ~$430K, which actually is pretty substantial, for a one time effort... But what is the probability of someone's iPhone game getting to #1 on the app store?

Scirra_Tom 11y ago
> after Apple took theirs, and the gov't took theirs, he was left with ~$150K in his most successful year... You've left off the biggest deduction, $280,000 to his partner. 3x more than he paid to the government in taxation.
maxerickson 11y ago
You've left out the 276,500 that the owner of the content got (about 1/3 of the revenue).
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Well, let's just say that I think if you look at the top 10% of salaries in this industry, compared to other industries, it's probably not great. Note I'm talking about salaries of people, not Supercell's income. i.e. if you look at the top 10% earning doctors, lawyers, musicians etc, I don't expect the app store to look great. And if you look at the median, the app store will likely be very, very substantially subpar. And if you look at the bottom 10%, it's probably a complete joke. All in all, I don't think the app store is an interesting place anymore for the average dev. But that's probably true of most entrepreneurs I feel. It's so hard to compete with big businesses, that you're either in a niche they can't conquer, doing something special, or you're losing to them. It's either great, or shit, and the great is a tiny percentage.

JabavuAdams 11y ago

Thanks to the author for sharing this info. That said, the app's downloads peaked in 2014, which was a different App Store.

philliphaydon 11y ago

All that tax...

malchow 11y ago
Obscene, isn't it? He could have sent a kid to college for the amount of tax he paid.
- paulpauper 11y ago
  The tax system punishes people who make wealth quickly (windfalls) and have to pay at the highest bracket, versus individuals who earns the same amount of money but more slowly and pay at a lower bracket.
  - vacri 11y ago
    I think most of us can live with the tax system not being optimised for the few individuals that strike it lucky in one year and then do not much at all for the next half-decade.
    - tamana 11y ago
      Any sympathy for the half decade they spend toiling for no income before they strike it lucky?
      - vacri 11y ago
        Why stop there? Why not rate taxes against lifetime earnings? That'd be great for me - I was paid below average wage for most of my working life.
    - taneq 11y ago
      The issue is not with people who strike it lucky in one year, the issue is people who invest in multi-year projects and then receive the payoff in a short time. There needs to be some way of being taxed over the total time spent on a project, rather than the time spent receiving a cheque at the end.

bsamuels 11y ago

only tangentially related, but I think it's screwed up that apple can take a 30% cut of absolutely all the money moving through the ios platform and not have an antitrust suite brought against them if microsoft can get screwed by the FTC for bundling IE with windows, why can't apple get screwed for only allowing app store apps on their devices?

colechristensen 11y ago
There are a lot of things a company can't do when they're a monopoly that non-monopoly companies can. Microsoft was abusing retailers and system builders because those vendors didn't have an alternative option. I agree the 30% is atrocious, but not likely illegal.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  This explanation is circular. Microsoft had a legally determined monopoly, not a real actual market monopoly where no one else could participate in the market. For instance, Apple made computers that were such sufficient substitutes for Windows computers that Microsoft chose to produce a version of one of the their core products for use on Apple computers.
- Steko 11y ago
  30% on a $0.99 game where apple is eating the credit card costs along with hosting, making sure the store isn't overwhelmed with spam and malware and bringing millions of eager paying customers to your table hardly seems atrocious.
  - colechristensen 11y ago
    I refuse to believe it's anything but a cash cow for Apple. That 30% cut got them 6 billion dollars in 2015.
    - Steko 11y ago
      Which means they made $14 billion for developers. Wal-Mart made $130 billion in profits in 2015 on $486 billion revenue, 27%. This is how stores work.

paulpauper 11y ago

The problem is the odds of such success are slim. There are too may apps, too many developers, not enough eyeballs. But good for him though, and very inspiring and informative. I think easier money can be made with buying deep in the money call options on 3x versions of the S&P 500 and the bond market, which is what I and my dad have been doing for awhile with success. Don't need coding skills or luck to make money with the S& 500

misiti3780 11y ago
this sounds interesting - can you provide some more details?
misiti3780 11y ago
are you talking about SPXL ?

smaili 11y ago

Truly a great writeup - I don't think I've ever seen a breakdown in greater detail than this regarding someone's experience building an app. For me personally, this was the most inspiring piece: Publishers are not created equal. It's something I learned very quickly when trying to understand the App Store feature mechanics. If you are Warner Brothers, SquareEnix, Kim Kardashian, King, etc, you get a red carpet to getting featured. You can release whatever trash or shoddy port you want, and you'll get featured. So you have two options, accept this and play by the rules I'm about to lay out, or don't participate.

giarc 11y ago
Same goes for Apple's 30% take. You either pay it, or you don't ship an iOS app
- cylinder 11y ago
  Does anyone want to bet on how many years it will take for Apple App Store to attract antitrust attention from the government? Eventually they will get pressured on this fee.
  - giarc 11y ago
    I don't know. For one, iOS doesn't control the market. Recent stats show iOS at 13.9% share [0]. Second, Google (and presumably others) take the same 30% [1]. As a part time developer that recently dealt with this 30% issue, I hate the fact they require it, but I understand why. Distributing the apps to millions of phones isn't free. 0 - http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp 1 - https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

metaphor 11y ago

Any idea why the OP chopped a clean 33% from gross income to account for income tax? This doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.

daveguy 11y ago
I was about to post on this. Either he is misrepresenting his taxes to make for a good story or he had a terrible accountant that had him pay too much in taxes. Contrary to popular (conservative) belief, when you go up to a higher tax bracket you are not taxed on your entire income at that rate. It is only the amount in that bracket that is taxed at the higher rate. His taxes should be $48,663 not $91,245. If he was already making above $183,250 from other income then, yes it would be taxed at that higher rate. Although you can't distinguish between the income that was taxed at a higher or lower rate, so it sounds like he is misrepresenting his tax burden either way. He does mention for the second year that he is "still at 33%" because of other contract work, so it looks like he just wants to over represent the taxes of someone pulling in a certain amount from an app. EDIT: Oh, later in the reddit thread he does mention he "saved a bit based on marginal tax rates". A bit, my ass. He paid about half the 33% he claimed -- $42,000 LESS than the $91,245 claimed based on that income. Saying the other income is the income on which he saved the marginal tax and that he had to pay a full 33% on the app income is just disingenuous.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- pbarnes_1 11y ago
  Yeah, the original post should be edited to reflect actual tax paid.

fsnb 11y ago

45% tax? In Poland I would pay 19% linear tax + $50/month for medical and social insurance in first 2 years, $160/month after 2 years. Nothing more.

vacri 11y ago
daveguy below goes through why the 45% tax claim is bogus.

chvid 11y ago

Congratulations on a very nice and innovative piece of work. Articles like these are encouraging but skews the full picture. For a game like this there are hundreds pieces of work with equal cost and complexity that get absolute no downloads in the app store.

spoinkaroo 11y ago

For comparison, the most popular game creator makes over 10 million per day over 4 games, with over 4 billion in revenue per year. This creator is supercell, with Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, Boom Beach and Hay Day Edit - They made 2.5 billion last year with nearly a billion in profit, so they may reach 10 million a day this year.

animal531 11y ago
Comparison to the other side, the guy on the bottom end is lucky if he's making any amount and could very well be far into the red every month. More interesting I think is to look at the average, where I very much doubt that the average developer makes anything more than a handful.

transfire 11y ago

I am dumbfounded. This guy grossed 700Gs from a take on Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure)?

kevindeasis 11y ago

He has a pretty good playbook for ios games. Are there other playbooks out there? Like "How to start a startup" by YC

smhanov 11y ago

I make a Saas web application and I still got something from this. I'm going to commit some $$$ and buy some other Saas apps to see what they do right.