For EA that’s a good thing.
The more people pretend to hate the more those people care… They hate a lot online, but then at home go back, turn on pc/console and go play some more EA games…
Exactly, that’s the sad truth IMHO too.
What I want to know is, is you guys are so confident in your game then why are you even afraid of giving up a few thousand dollars? You make this big deal about small indies are perfectly able to create good games. Then what is even the problem? Let’s say you make a game and sell for 15 dollars. Then let’s assume that valve takes 30% and epic it’s 5%. Then let’s assume that there is a 40% tax (the exact number will depend on where you live of course).
That means that for each 15 dollars you make about 5.85$. In order to make back 3 thousand dollars you only need to sell roughly 500 copies. If all of you are as talented as you claim to be then selling a mere 500 copies would be very trivial to do. So what are you even afraid of?
Let’s be real though, the competition really isn’t strong at all. Majority of the games on steam that fail to sell are very bad games that look like someone just finished a tutorial and made a game in a few months. Games that the devs themselves would NEVER even touch. If I had a bad game one that I would never even play and I sold like say 9 copies of it I would still consider a success.
As soon as you see a quality game with decent gameplay, decent art etc. You know something that looks like the person actually put real effort into making? the sale numbers shoot way up!!!
This is why I do not believe in such a thing as indie game market saturation. if you have is quality and has hard work put into it, with some sensible commonsense marketing it will stand out easily.
If I had a multi million dollar marketing campaign behind my game, then yes, selling 500 copies would be as easy as pie.
If I was lucky enough for Pewpiepie to play and review my game online, then yes, selling 500 copies would be as easy as pie.
…
If talent was the only thing a dev needed to succeed, then a lot of us would be filthy rich by now. Talent only takes you so far.
No offense, but huge amount of devs simply overestimate how good their games are and aren’t as talented as they would like to think they are.
1 Like
You do understant what you just said, right? Remember this:
So, if the number of dellusional devs are so massive, then what’s the point of a high fee?
The issue is that people on Steam are getting spammed with crappy games. You cannot find good games anymore. When you release your game it will be gone in less than 1 hour from the ‘New Releases’ section because Steam is being flooded with junk games that look like a 4 year old hit the keyboard randomly for 3 hours.
That means that small companies who are low on budget will not be able to sell - so unless you dump 50.000 or 100.000$ into YouTubers showing your game you can just fack off. Because your product will be as successful as all those junk games. That’s what he is complaining about.
Personally i don’t give a ■■■■, i got lucky i released 2-3 games on Steam during the good years so i’m in the position to dish out a 100k to make a game popular. But i fully understand the thread starter. That being said, it’s a good thing - because by giving everyone a way to release ■■■■ it basically stops other companies from being successful on that platform. Gotta love it.
So if you have a good game, show me your prototype, i might fund it for a 50% share. In the end 50% of a million is better than 100% of nothing…
Do you happen to know a substantial amount of games, that got good sales, just by publishing on steam without marketing, some years ago? I’m just curios because I don’t remember ever buying a game from “suggestions” or “new releases”, normally I would hear about it somewhere else, or see it in “featured” section.
Most likely you still can “buy” a spot in “featured” from the steam, just as it was before with large publishers getting there.
This.
And just lmao at the devs trying to excuse themselves with the “well do you make great games?” argument. Roger Ebert did not make any movies. Neither do any movie critics. Or for that matter most viewers. I guess they are all just wrong about movies like the “The Room” and “The happening” being bad then? Just lulz at this stupidity.
I do. First game i ever made got me about 600.000 EUR in the first month. It didn’t matter what you released. Remember “The Stomping Land” - 12 million USD in less than 6 months and the game was ■■■■. Why do you think there are games sitting forever in the Early Access Top 10 ? It’s because that list is driving their sales.
And to be Featured all you had to do was asking your steam representative if they could feature you a few days. Nowadays - thanks to the spam-the-fakk-out-of-steam mentality by people producing crappy games most indies don’t even get an answer from Steam. And again, bad for you guys, good for me, since all i have to do to get a game listed and featured is sending an email. So yeah, being successful now is hard on Steam.
Also, i don’t understand why they got rid of Greenlight. People were complaining they couldnt get past Greenlight. Guess what, if you could not get past greenlight your product was ■■■■. I actually used Greenlight to figure out if prototype/concept had potential or not - now i don’t have that tool anymore, i have to release the game and put additional funds into marketing.
And here is the catch about Greenlight, if you got those 12.000 Votes who got you greenlit you basically had 12.000 potential customers already who had your product on their wishlist. So the day your game came out there was enough buzz going on to make your game interesting enough for Youtubers and Streamers to pickup on it. Nowadays you actually have to pay them because they cannot be arsed anymore actually buying your title because it’s ‘Hot’. (Plus, you need the visibility from them to be successful)
For indies this is big step back, for everyone who already released 1-2 games they don’t care. This system does exactly the opposite of what was implemented for - it ensures a few keep making money while the rest of you never get enough sales to make a living.
Again, if you have something cool, feel free to PM me, i’m actually looking for something i can publish this year.
I’am still hoping that Epic will one day expand into UE4 game publishing via their Launcher. Millions of people have it installed now because of Fortnite.
Likely it will never happen, but there is alot of potential.
Then what makes you think they will even be able to make the game in the first place? Where are they getting the money to pay for the software licenses? Or the computer hardware? Or like I have pointed out a million times by now, ***the money to even just pay themselves wages? ***
And no, you can’t make a good game on a zero dollar budget. A lot of indie devs think they can bypass all the costs by using free programs or assets. They can’t. Or at least not without massively sacrificing quality.
Cry me a river. You aren’t being denied food or healthcare. Nobody is entitled to making it as a video game developer. If it’s for the industry’s own good to now allow just anybody to publish then the entry fee should be higher than it is currently.
What did he need those 5 grand for? What game was he making?
Really? How much does it cost making a game in a school computer? How many people already owns a computer long before deciding developing a game?
I sure hope you’re using Maya or Max and not that free product called Blender. After all, you want quality, right?
You cry me a river!
Yes, nobody is entitled to making it as a game dev, but apparently you want to deny others that possibility, by limiting them as much as possible.
If you can’t handle competition, then you’re in the wrong field.
I think you misunderstand, this is not competition I for one wish it was. This is about clogging the hole with too much waste that your toilet floods.
Sorry the school computer is not an argument :).
I think what the guy said is true, while you can cut cost with Blender you wont cut it with other software, paying your team or even basic expenses for your time and life. and blender alone comes with cost too, the cost of time. time to learn it to learn new things create pipeline for your game, troubleshoot etc… And all this is multiplied by a factor of two and three when using open source software 90% of the time. Because of lack of support, technical tools not readily available etc…
This is not about denying anyone anything, I think it just needs to be fairer, it can’t be perfect but it needs to be revised, if you could keep an open mind to that you will be better off maybe not now but as a career job if you wish to be a developer or work in the field in general.
5000$ today is in fact money enough to pay one person one month salary on a special agreement, maybe, if you are lucky. And believe me you can’t get jack ■■■■ done in one month in this field if you are serious.
I do understand. If gamers don’t like the flood in X they will start to move to Y, forcing X to change their businesses practices and creating a real competition.
Until then, I will consider anyone that desires to create barriers as someone that want to limit competition.
Why is not an argument? The last time I checked, you can work at school’s computers and retain your IP.
So, it’s about reducing competition after all.
So, you do agree with the OP, in that only pros (full time devs with sh*tloads of money) should have a shoot?
Pretty much feels like Valve had a deal with Publishers…
Everyone a few years ago was like “-Publishers are dead, nobody need them anymore!”.
Then bang! We’re back to the days you won’t make any sales if you don’t have a publisher with you 
Valve = 30%
Publisher = 30%
Taxes = 20%
VAT = 20%
UE4 = 5%
LOL Why are people making games to sell for as little as $20 ~ $5?! No idea. Massive waste of time…
Unless you live in China, where you can be comfortable earning as low as $300/month.
Then someone might say “it’s for the art, not for maximizing profits!”.
Yeah sure, let’s see when you try to grow a family out of “for art” argument ^^
The smartest indies by far are the ones outside Steam making games for localized markets, living away from global competition… By far.
I made a game (Super Mario clone) in 2009 localized to my language only for Mobile (with Unity lol) and published on the local (non US) app stores.
For $2, sold 23k copies.
Then I did a game about basketball “free throws” for iPads, again I avoided global stores…
Sold 61k copies for $1 and appeared on some mobile games front pages; but Glu Mobile kept most of the revenue.
The money I made I invested in a more ambitious project RPG and went without a publisher to the “global iOS” (US Store)… Spent everything on Unity Pro licenses and assets.
Didn’t sell a sht, lost my money, rage quit, migrated to UE4 and looked for a job lol
I didn’t try that again because by that time was already 2014 and mobile market was already flooded.
Stories like these just convince me even more that success in the indie games industry just boils down to luck. Yes having a good game makes a difference but only so much. At the end of the day your game will live or die depending on how much exposure it will get, which itself is luck based.
It wasn’t so much about luck.
Back then, before the “great flood of 2011”, it was VERY easy to make money on mobile
Fast-forward 2011+, there was already companies spending over 1 million/month in marketing for the sake of trying to dominate the top 100 lists.
Do you think for example, a game like this would make you over a million dollars??
On today’s market, of course not. Nobody would play that, neither pay for it.
But back then that thing up there got #1 paid title and made TONS of money ^^
What I mean is:
Steam today is just like Mobile stores of 2011. The same thing is happening again…
And I few sorry for the people investing so much effort trying to cross that jungle alone.