Inspired by true events from this morning
For context: I make indie games and have released two so far and I’m currently working on the third one which is weird as fuck. So the way that Steam works is, they don’t send you money anytime you make a sale, but they send all of it at the end of every month. Now September is almost over and I got an e-mail titled “Steam Payment Notification” and I get all hyped up. I open it and read it that the Payment Notification is actually that there is no Payment since I didn’t make $100 in sales. Way to hype me up and bring me down, Steam.
Youtube and twitch work this same way. When I was starting there were months where I didnt make any money because I didn’t meet the minimum. Hoping next month meets the requirement for you boss 🙏
I see you settled on a design for the toaster. Love the mustache.
Other games include “be a rock” and “pizza synthwave” and this is the weird one.
Wish listed.
Does Steam take a cut for distribution?
If not, while this emotionally sucks, they’ve a solid operational policy.
Yes, their cut is 30% which is a lot, but they are pretty much the only big platform out there. Epic games has been trying to get in the game but so far they are not close. Their cut is 15%.
I want to note that you’d need about $143 in gross sales to meet the threshold of $100 in net profit.
On the surface that sounds like a lot. But, they’re providing a service without any guarantee of any income. Epic can only compete because they’ve few users and are willing to operate at a near loss in attempt to garner market share.
This will be a difficult one for others to understand as a “good deal”. Gamers are usually correct when they pull out their pitchforks. This should not be one of those times.
While I’m no fan of Epic Games for bribing companies to keep games off of Steam for a year or more, Valve’s market dominance in PC game sales isn’t a good thing for developers or consumers.
I released a game like three years ago and it’s earned $97 in that time.
I feel your pain
Buy it yourself, get over 100, cash out
Haha, I’ve considered it. I’d really like to at least be able to buy pizza for the gang who helped make the game.
Tell us the game now.
Concord
I have lots of bills that are less than that every month, and yet somehow I can’t just say they’re not worth paying…
I’m sure if you owed them 100 bucks they’d demand it
*$99
Hey me too! I released my first game on Steam a month ago and by all objective measures it was a flop, but as a hobbyist I’m still proud of it. It honestly did better than I thought for a small niche game that I did a terrible job of marketing, and my one review so far was quite positive so I’ll count that as a small win as I move onwards to the next game.
EDIT: Here’s the game because my reply is getting harder to spot below - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2792160/SnowDown/ - It’s a small Jackbox-inspired party game (using phones as controllers) but with real-time action and physics as you throw snowballs around and destroy structures.
By the way, here’s the game for anyone interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2792160/SnowDown/
I didn’t expect to see so many replies!
you cant just SAY that and then not mention the game name
wow you really are bad at marketing
The eternal conflict between being an indie dev and not wanting to be a shill :'(
What is the game? It’s not being a shill to answer questions.
If you want to support me, a wishlist of my current game will mean the world to me: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2336120/Do_Not_Press_The_Button_To_Delete_The_Multiverse/
But please don’t spend money on my previous games, I recognize that they aren’t that good I don’t want to burden anyone financially with them (I loved every minute of making them, but I was still a noob back then).
FYI you have a typo in your last screenshot (This sign m[a]y not…):
Arhgh missed that! Thank you so much!
