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Small/hungry teams make great games, but they don't make great money. Games from small teams will develop massive fanbases (KSP, Factorio, subnautica, early mi

Small/hungry teams make great games, but they don't make great money. Games from small teams will develop massive fanbases (KSP, Factorio, subnautica, early minecraft) and people will buy their games. But that doesn't matter. Those small teams do not have the corporate power to capitalize on the microtransactions and subscription services that pull the real money. I bought Factorio long long ago. I still play it occasionally. If the developers asked me for money, say for an updated version, I would send money without question. But they haven't asked. Good game. Bad at making money.

GartzenDeHaes 2y ago
According to vginsights, Factorio made $123 million on Steam. Maybe they didn't make the maximum amount of money possible, but they are good a making money. https://vginsights.com/game/427520 https://vginsights.com/game/427520 Edit: The gross revenue is in the top 0.01% of all Steam games.
- dwallin 2y ago
  Placement within all steam games is not really a useful metric, there is an extremely long tail of games on steam that make basically nothing.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  Factorio is a massive success and only made $123M. For a company funding a lot of things, you are going to be putting out mostly flops that lose money, and then hoping to get it back on the successes. But it doesn't look like the successes are good enough to fund all the failures. Unless you mostly take super boring safe options.
Teever 2y ago
I think you have that wrong. Maybe the kind of people who are drawn to those different kinds of games from smaller studios are not the kinds of people who will go for bullshit like microtransactions and subscriptions and the developers of those games know that. Prior to the release of Subnautica, Unknown Worlds spent years developing and promoting Natural Selection 2, an innovative RTS/FPS hybrid that was the sequel to their crowd hit mod for Half Life. They anticipated yuge money from turning the game into a frantic but predictable eSports thing meant for mass consumption with flashy paid skins and the like. It was a failure. The fanbase rejected it and it ultimately killed the game. They learned from that experience and delivered a totally different game which was based on the traditional business model of making a good single player game, selling it as a complete product and then if it's successful making and selling a sequel. That game was called Subnautica and it's probably the only reason you ever heard of Unknown Worlds. There's no way I'm subscribing to Factorio, and I doubt there was ever a path to success for a game like Factorio that involved subscriptions just like there was ever a path to success for an incredible game like NS2 through eSports.
- floydnoel 2y ago
  I've not played Subnautica, but I had loads of fun playing the original Natural Selection. Still one of my favorite games from those days. Thanks for making the link!
yencabulator 2y ago
Sometimes they do. > By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. [In 2013], Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. > In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion.

GartzenDeHaes 2y ago

According to vginsights, Factorio made $123 million on Steam. Maybe they didn't make the maximum amount of money possible, but they are good a making money. https://vginsights.com/game/427520 https://vginsights.com/game/427520 Edit: The gross revenue is in the top 0.01% of all Steam games.

dwallin 2y ago
Placement within all steam games is not really a useful metric, there is an extremely long tail of games on steam that make basically nothing.
Gigachad 2y ago
Factorio is a massive success and only made $123M. For a company funding a lot of things, you are going to be putting out mostly flops that lose money, and then hoping to get it back on the successes. But it doesn't look like the successes are good enough to fund all the failures. Unless you mostly take super boring safe options.

Teever 2y ago

I think you have that wrong. Maybe the kind of people who are drawn to those different kinds of games from smaller studios are not the kinds of people who will go for bullshit like microtransactions and subscriptions and the developers of those games know that. Prior to the release of Subnautica, Unknown Worlds spent years developing and promoting Natural Selection 2, an innovative RTS/FPS hybrid that was the sequel to their crowd hit mod for Half Life. They anticipated yuge money from turning the game into a frantic but predictable eSports thing meant for mass consumption with flashy paid skins and the like. It was a failure. The fanbase rejected it and it ultimately killed the game. They learned from that experience and delivered a totally different game which was based on the traditional business model of making a good single player game, selling it as a complete product and then if it's successful making and selling a sequel. That game was called Subnautica and it's probably the only reason you ever heard of Unknown Worlds. There's no way I'm subscribing to Factorio, and I doubt there was ever a path to success for a game like Factorio that involved subscriptions just like there was ever a path to success for an incredible game like NS2 through eSports.

floydnoel 2y ago
I've not played Subnautica, but I had loads of fun playing the original Natural Selection. Still one of my favorite games from those days. Thanks for making the link!

yencabulator 2y ago

Sometimes they do. > By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. [In 2013], Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit. > In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion.