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How much money does he have in order to make such a big donation? Has stardew valley made that much?
by selfawareMammal 9mo ago
How much money does he have in order to make such a big donation? Has stardew valley made that much?
- cdelsolar 9mo agoSolo developer who’s sold millions of it, yeah I think so
- rvnx 9mo agoHalf a billion USD (40M+ units sold), so 125K USD to have the core engine of your product be actively maintained by an expert for the price of +/- one developer is a very good deal
- bhaney 9mo agohttps://steam-revenue-calculator.com/app/413150/stardew-valley https://steam-revenue-calculator.com/app/413150/stardew-vall...
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoThis should really put any AAA studio to shame. A single developer sold half a billion dollars on Steam alone.
- MattRix 9mo agoWhy would it put them to shame? It’s an incredibly rare situation and most AAA devs would be super happy for him.
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoIs it incredibly rare? We've seen time and time again in the last few years, really basic indie games overtake AAA games in sales on Steam. Schedule One is another one which had 450 thousand concurrent players not very long after its launch. It seems AAA game studios are missing what gamers want at every turn. There's an uptick in indie devs that have broken through the barriers with good gameplay despite the graphics not being AAA quality. Edit other games that come to mind: Hollow Knight: Silksong, Hades II, Schedule 1, and R.E.P.O. More obvious examples: Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio were all indie studios as far as I am aware. Minecraft being one of the most successful games at 350 million copies sold.
- snowram 9mo agoThose games are a grain of sand in the infinite desert that is the indie game world. The vast majority of indie games on Steam are barely even noticed by anyone.
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoSchedule One sold more copies than a brand new Assassins Creed game at launch on Steam, Minecraft has sold more copies than most AAA games, including GTA 5.
- Zekio 9mo agoMinecraft has sold like 350 million copies which is more than second and third place combined IIRC if you look at the top best selling games
- renewiltord 9mo agoYeah, sometimes I look back and think: Why didn’t they just choose to build a genre defining game? Next you’ll tell me that instead of just buying Bitcoin at $1k they chose to make yet another game.
- jasonlotito 9mo ago> Is it incredibly rare? Yes. It's incredibly rare. And suggesting otherwise is silly. Go ahead. Compare all the indie games released and see how often they succeed. Sure, you can find successful ones, but you are ignoring those that do not succeed. There is a name for that, you know—survivorship bias.
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoI'm not claiming it's every indie game I'm saying its not quite as rare as you suggest, I look at new releases on Steam all the time, there's less indie games than you think being released. More than there probably should be, but its not like tens of thousands a day or week or even in a month. Its about 800 a month. That's rare if anything, not "incredibly rare"
- Wowfunhappy 9mo agoA winning lottery ticket would have an even better return on investment. Good luck with that business strategy. (To be clear, Stardew Valley is a great game. But "making a breakout indie game" really does feel akin to winning the lottery to me, even if the game is fundamentally great.)
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoYour chances are much more higher building your own game than playing the lottery endlessly. You forget that guy who made Stardew Valley had to self-teach everything he knew, till he got to the point he quit his full time job. I don't see in what universe you have a better chance to win the lottery, than to build a successful indie game if you truly put your heart into it. Some of the greatest inventions didn't come to us because someone won the lottery, they experimented and kept going. Look at Duck Duck Go, he had 30 other projects that 'failed' before Duck Duck Go succeeded.
- Wowfunhappy 9mo agoThe lottery definitely has worse odds, I just don't think that's saying much. If you want to create indie games—and you can make it work without quitting your day job—go for it! But I don't think it would be smart for EA or Ubisoft to, like, stop making big-budget games and make indie games instead. If you can make a breakout hit, you can make a huge profit—but you have to make a breakout hit, and that comes down to a lot of luck. --- Now, I do think it would make sense for EA/Ubisoft to try more mid-budget releases, which explore something new instead of continuing a 10+ year franchise. A lot of them will fail, but if a few are extremely successful, they could make up for the failures. It kind of felt like the publishers were doing this for a while (Grow Home, Little Nightmares) but my sense is that it has kind of stopped? Although caveat, I also haven't been following gaming as closely as I once did.
- philistine 9mo ago> The lottery definitely has worse odds, I just don't think that's saying much. Absolutely. People tend to assume that 95% of video games turn a profit, when it's the reverse. There are highly polished, incredibly high quality video games who simply just don't sell.
- nkrisc 9mo agoStardew Valley is a very noteworthy achievement, but it’s not the kind of success anyone should expect to simply replicate. Go for it, but most will not achieve a similar outcome.
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoYou miss all the shots you never take. The Stardew developer took a shot. Notch took many shots.
- nkrisc 9mo agoThat’s true, but most people will still miss all those kinds of shots. If you can take the chance and want to, do it. I just recommend having a backup plan.
- 3eb7988a1663 9mo agoThe Stardew guy spent five years not working, living off of the labor of his girlfriend. Sure, take your shot, but it is unreasonable to think that many people have the opportunity to drop everything for a five year vision quest, hoping to come out the other side a financial success.
- rachr 9mo agoAnd over 8 million copies for the Switch.
- MrZander 9mo ago69 million dollars in refunds!? That's 12% of the gross, seems crazy high. Is this pulling from actual Steam numbers?
- Wowfunhappy 9mo agoThis doesn't seem high to me at all. You buy the game, try it for an hour, feel kind of meh on it or even just see a different game you think you'd like even more, and hit the refund button. If anything, I'm surprised it's only ~12%.
- SXX 9mo agoAmount of refunds is usually pretty high for all less popular games. A lot of people tend to use refunds as demo. I doubt its that high for Stardew Valley though. Simply because popular games are sold via network effect and people ususlly know what they buying.
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoIt was a labor of love by a single developer. Assuming he never really hired that many more people, he can probably afford it.
- clejack 9mo agoStardew valley was apparently solo developed, and if Google is accurate it has sold over 40 million copies. Even if he sold it for a dollar, the dev would be very successful by most standards.
- doug_life 9mo ago“In Feb. 2024, Stardew Valley reached 30 million copies sold, and if we assume each copy sold for $15, that means that the game could have generated a revenue of $450 million. A modest 10 percent profit margin puts ConcernedApe’s earnings at $45 million, a number that is likely to increase in the future.” Source: https://dotesports.com/stardew-valley/news/how-much-money-did-concernedape-make-from-stardew-valley-developer-eric-barones-net-worth https://dotesports.com/stardew-valley/news/how-much-money-di...
- benoau 9mo agoTBH the profit margin on this game is probably closer to 100% than 10%, it was a solo-dev game so never much overhead, I think one guy was hired to work on it.
- jasonjmcghee 9mo agoWell he made a 10% deal with a publisher iirc and steam gets 30% - so that's a chunk right there
- kiba 9mo agoHe also put an insane amount of effort, far more than most of us mortals.
- cheschire 9mo agoSee: Blood, Sweat and Pixels; Chapter 2 https://a.co/d/4OIUtsN https://a.co/d/4OIUtsN
- MegaDeKay 9mo agoCame here to recommend this book. It is fantastic. There are nine other games covered besides Stardew Valley. Some are great, some not so great, but the stories behind each one are excellent.
- kevinh 9mo agoValve's 30% cut would lower it substantially. Taxes might put it beneath 50%.
- jasongill 9mo agoStardew Valley is in the top 5 selling indie games of all time, with 50 million units sold. It's owned and run entirely by one person (the donor in OP's link) - he ended his relationship with a (small) games publisher a few years ago, and runs everything himself.
- big_toast 9mo agoAdditionally there is a concert series that's quite good and other merchandise.
- tempest_ 9mo agoMy girlfriend owns the board game, she enjoys it!
- throwaway638637 9mo agoDoes this mean he does the mobile games himself now? I remember he had outsourced those for a while.
- philistine 9mo agoThink of it this way; he subcontracts, but he deals with the subcontractors himself.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]