Steam's third-party data site SteamSpy recently released a 2021 Steam big data report estimated according to its own algorithm, which has a lot of interesting data.
In 2021, Steam has 6 games that have sold more than 5 million sets, and these 6 games must have names that you are familiar with, they are: "New World", "Halo Unlimited", "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds", "Heroic Shrine", "Eternal Destruction", "Battlefield Storm 2042".
Yes, you read that right, it also sells more than 5 million
There are also 29 games with sales between 1 million and 5 million, including the domestic independent game "Dyson Ball Project", the "niche" foreign independent game "Evil Inscription" with a popular reputation, the TGA best "Double Trip", and the big IP commercial games "Resident Evil: Village", "Age of Empires 4" and "Extreme Racing: Horizon 5".
On the Steam platform, a total of 5 domestic games in 2021 exceeded 1 million sales, and domestic independent games like "Bright Memory: Infinity" broke through 500,000 sales in just two months.
But these sales stars are not all Steam, last year a total of 745 games sold more than 50,000 copies, but how many games will be sold on the Steam platform in 2021?
That's 10,661, which means less than 7 percent of the games sold more than 50,000 copies.
At the 2018 GDC (Game Developers Conference), a developer named McRose presented a shocking set of data based on his own analysis:
About 82 percent of individual developers earn less from Steam than they earn from a job.
So what percentage of indie game studios can make money by releasing their first game that will sustain their studios? Coincidentally, this proportion is also 7%, which coincides with the data of 2021.
On the one hand, indie games are the white moonlight in the eyes of players and developers, and they are "conscience games", but on the other hand, the real living conditions of independent game developers are not as optimistic as most players think.
It is often seen in the forum that "this game is no problem to make a buyout system and sell hundreds of thousands of copies", so what is the real situation?
On the vginsights website, I found another set of data:
Of all the games released on Steam, 67% of the total revenue of the game is less than $5,000.
Let's say you're making exactly $5,000 on a game, and even if you've made an indie game in just one year, and the developer is the only one, you'll only make $292 a month after deducting Steam's share.
That's the truest side of Steam, most developers make far less money doing indie games than they do a job, and as an indie game studio, you only have a chance to survive if you become the top 7%.
This article, which is full of data from start to finish, may be a bit boring, but it's the truest portrayal of the living conditions of indie game developers.
The development team for Project Dyson could not even afford a 4K monitor
If you look at interviews with indie game developers, you'll find that the stories are often strikingly similar: starting out working at a commercial game company, quitting my job to make indie games with a few partners in pursuit of my dreams, drinking the northwest wind and developing it for two or three years, and finally the game was hard to get online, and the money earned wasn't even enough to invite the brothers to eat a few more good meals.
"Generating Electricity for Love" is the true state of most indie game developers.
So after looking at these numbers, what do I really want to say?
Is it to pour cool water on domestic indie games? Not. In the past 2021, the leader of domestic independent games such as "Dyson Ball Project" and "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" can already sell more than one million copies on Steam, and break the wrist with well-known foreign masterpieces, saying that the prospects of domestic independent games are bright and not exaggerated.
What I really want to say is that although the matter of how hard indie game developers are seems to have been said ten thousand times, and the hard story behind the developers has almost made players "aesthetically tired", I still want to pay tribute to the indie game developers who are not in the spotlight over and over again. Not every indie game developer with a dream can become the lucky 7%, but it is with countless sparks that want to be that 7%, indie games will shine so brightly.
Mobile-side buyout indie games, because the pricing is usually much lower than Steam, the ecology of mobile buyout games is far less than Steam perfect, if developers specifically develop buyout independent games for mobile platforms, the difficulty of profitability is much higher than Steam. So you sometimes see some buyout mobile games on TapTap that look a bit "simple and rough" ported, because usually these games are developed by two or three people or even one person, and there is not enough energy to optimize for multiple platforms.
I don't want to make any big sense, I just hope that this article will give you a little more understanding of the real situation of indie game developers, and that will be enough. After all, behind these cold numbers, there are flesh-and-blood developers, and their own lonely stories of sticking to their dreams.
Hats off to the indie game developers who stand guard in the darkness and watch the light, and may they all be the brightest stars.
Resources:
Let's Be Realistic: A Deep Dive into How Games Are Selling on Steam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WycVOCbeKqQ&t=443s