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“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 o
by 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%.
- ehnto 9mo agoAll the game markets take huge cuts. Steam is 30% if I recall correctly.
- chamomeal 9mo agoDamn I didn’t realize. 30% is pretty hefty
- margalabargala 9mo agoThe service Steam provides to game developers is substantial.
- benoau 9mo agoNot really, what they actually do for most games is basically what Google and Apple do: a token review, then nothing apart from some niceties for players. Then they pocket an immense profit, it came out in one of Epic's cases that Valve net $50 million/year profit per employee. The only thing for developers they still do better than Google and Apple really is a few promotions throughout the year that target specific genres for released games developers can register for (whereas Google and Apple select the games they promote), and the "Next Fest" 3x a year for unreleased games. They used to do stuff like "visibility rounds" that would reach 100,000s of people who didn't know about your game - the same feature today targets people who already wishlisted your game, so these days most developers have to put significant effort and money into promoting their Steam page on other channels like tiktok/youtube/reddit.
- margalabargala 9mo agoWell, plus there's the whole version management and packaging and hosting and distributing giant amounts of data. If you are an indie team that makes a 50GB game and has 50k players, distributing and update management would be a gargantuan task without Steam or something like it. 2.5 petabytes of bandwidth isn't cheap. Yes what they do is profitable, I'm not saying that it isn't. But paying for what they do is (clearly) still more attractive to developers than rolling their own infrastructure to do the same.
- foxrider 9mo agoSteam takes 30%, other stores take 10-20%
- geon 9mo agoPresumably he spent years working on it. His own time should be subtracted from the revenue too.
- benoau 9mo agoHundreds of millions minus hundreds of thousands of dollars lol.
- keyringlight 9mo agoAnd the decision to risk years of his life spent on a project that might not pan out. IIRC he was largely supported by his girlfriend during development and he worked in a cinema. That's in contrast to a job at a studio where you get a salary for your time whether it succeeds or not.
- tracker1 9mo ago30% off the top for most stores (Valve/Steam, Apple/iPhone, Google/Android, etc), then around 50% taxes between state, local... some fixed expenses and overhead. It's probably well under 20% in the bank after all is said and done. That said, it's still a lot of money.
- yunnpp 9mo agoGod, that's awful. That 30% cut for the middle man hurts. At least the government tax can be put to good use (emphasis on can...)
- tempest_ 9mo agoGabe gotta buy a $500 million dollar yacht. It pays to be the middle man!
- LaffertyDev 9mo agoStardew likely qualifies for the reduced store cuts. Steam _lowers_ the percentage for a game when it sells high. Still somewhere between 10 and 25%, though. Generally, the Steam cut is considered “fair” for Indy devs. The benefits of steam (discoverability, massive audience) generate more sales. My Indy dev friends are not upset about the steam cut at all. This, however, is one area where eventually Epic Games shines — they take a much lower cut and if they increase in popularity with gamers then steam might be forced to lower their share.
- 3eb7988a1663 9mo agoThe game has also been on sale numerous times for less than $15. It is currently available on Steam for $9
- pwdisswordfishy 9mo agoWhy would 1 unit of this game have a "profit margin" of 10%? It's a video game. He's not selling canned goods.
- edent 9mo agoOf the purchase price that the end-user pays, the retailer has to pay tax. That knocks off a variable percentage. It would be 20% in the UK. There's also the cost of selling through Steam / Google Play / Whatever - typically 30%. I assume the developer has some professional expenses - an accountant at a minimum, probably a lawyer, certainly insurance. Maybe they also have a PR team, advertising, and the like. I don't know whether they pay for testers, translators, and things like that. Then we get on to things like buying a new development machine, going to tech conferences, taking an educational course, backups, and all the other things that a business needs to spend on in order to be effective. Maybe a profit margin of 10% is unrealistically low - but developing software has legitimate costs. The margin is never going to be 100%.
- PurpleRamen 9mo agoBesides tax and the store's cut, the games also regularly sales and prices-changes. So you can't just extrapolate the price today with the amount of units sold and assume this to be the revenue.
- pwdisswordfishy 9mo ago> you can't just extrapolate the price today with the amount of units sold and assume this to be the revenue Who did that? This thread seems to be filled with people who don't understand what marginal cost is.
- philistine 9mo agoWhat do you think the profit margin of canned goods is? They make cents on every can. Something like 2-3%. The video games industry is filled to the brim with gatekeepers who take their cuts. Valve takes 30%, just for their store. Publishers start at 10%. Your engine might take a cut. Estimating that Stardew Valley, the big success video game with the lowest overhead bar none, has made 10% profit might be too low. 20%? Might be high.
- SXX 9mo agoThere are regional pricing and sales. Good chunk of those 30 millions sold way below US price. He certainly earned what you say though.