this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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That seems like a pretty damn healthy market to me.
100k is obviously fuckall for a AAA production, but that aren't really that many of those, and most of those that don't suck hard did fine.
Is it though? 100k isn't really a lot after Steam's cut and taxes (unless you live in a cheap CoL country). Even with a 1-person team it probably breaks down to about 50k a year after Steam/taxes and that's only if you make a top 5 percent game on your own.
Elsewhere in the report it mentions that games have become increasingly winner take all, where in 2016 top games only made up 37% of all revenue, now they take up 61%.
Making enough to live on as the 700th best PC game in a year is a lot. There weren't anywhere near 700 actually respectable games released last year.
Out of more than 14K.
The number of games that people published doesn't matter. There weren't more than 300 that weren't worse than dogshit.
Steam having no barrier to entry is not a bad thing. It's their obligation given their market share.
That's only enough to "live on" if it's 2-3 devs or if their spouses have good jobs. I don't think many $100k/yr games have solo devs.
That said, I do think those are good numbers for most teams, and especially new teams on their first or second game.
Lethal Company has literally one single person as the dev and Battlebit Remastered has 3. I don’t know why it’d be hard for game number 700 to also have a solo developer, or maybe two.
The 700th best game in a single year damn well better be a solo dev. Even saying there are half that released in a year that aren't shovelware is generous.
If you're a studio that can't do better than that you deserve to shut down.
It's really hard for small games to get noticed. Even if they are good.