I had a game reach about $600 per day in revenue for a few months way back in 2010. Overall I think it made around $100K, and another game made about $30K.
So, even though I was making money, I still wanted out. The reasons came down to those listed below:
1) Taxes.
I wonder if it's easier now, but back then, I had to manually pay individual counties in my state, I had to pay individual states, and and then there were countries. I chose not to sell my game in any non-U.S. country just because of this. So, the tax nightmare wasn't something I was interested in, and was a big part of exiting the game selling business.
2) Make updates or create something new?
I originally did well updating my game. It kept people interested, and seemed to spur new sales somehow, but working on the SAME game for months and months and only making minor updates was not fun. It was work. So, I decided to make more games. I had one game make about another $30K, but everything else didn't sell at all. This was incredibly discouraging.
3) Reviews and Customer Support
When you are dependent on game sales, you check your reviews daily, and you freak out about anything less than 5 stars. Every mean comment hits hard. Customers start writing you, and some of them are crazy. I received death threats for removing a small feature for example. I also received CONSTANT questions about getting my game to work on different devices and computers. I couldn't keep up efficiently.
4) Daily Sales Stress
I would watch daily sales like a hawk. If an hour was slow, I'd stress. If a day was slow, I'd panic. It all had to just end. I couldn't market all day every day and work on new features and new games, so I was at the mercy of the app stores and it made me nuts.
5) Sales slowed
Finally, sales started slowing because of all the competition to my game (maybe). Other devs saw it doing well and a bunch of clones started showing up. Some even used my assets. Some Just added an "!" after the name of my game and were somehow using my code. I wasn't getting sales because my game had been out for a while, and then there was pirating and fakes. I know some people have their own opinion about pirating, but I would get emails from people telling me my game gave them a virus, then when we got down to it, they had stolen it from some shady site and still wanted support and to blame me for installing an infected game.
So, all that being said, yeah, making okay money in the game industry just wasn't enough to make me want to continue, but I REALLY like to make games, so part of me wants to try again anyway. Perhaps learning from these experiences will make the next adventure a little easier, who knows?
What taxes are you talking about? You mentioned that you were selling through app stores, which I assume handled sales taxes for you in the few cases when they may be required. Your business income taxes would be the same as any business in your city/county/state/country. What else is there?
Google Play is starting to remit taxes by state, but they haven’t always done this. It was/is up to the seller. And if you sell with PayPal or something on your own site, check all the laws of where your product is being downloaded, you’ll be surprised. My accountant ruined my year that year.
I'm not still selling on Google Play, and haven't for a while, but if you're interested in seeing where Google currently remits taxes by state and country, the link is below:
Thanks for sharing! That’s the downside of mediocre success. Too little money to outsource tasks, too much to abandon and allocate your time resources elsewhere.
Glad you made the right call and I hope you find another passion project soon!
Maybe I live in a totally different universe, but it's really hard for me to consider a software product that grossed $100k to be a "mediocre success."
In my universe, I make that (net even, not gross) in half a year with essentially zero responsibility for marketing, taxes, customer support, etc. - nobody can realistically steal my work and cut into my wages with it - far less stress - and I keep making that over and over again every 6 months without having to do anything really that new or different.
In comparison, a game that grossed $100k, which I have to pay self-employment taxes on, and perhaps app store fees out of that too, sounds awfully mediocre, at best.
Hehe same here but, the poster mentioned 2010 and total revenue. If it’s $100.000 in 1 year, then sure! That would probably have potential for growth as well. This didn’t read like that :)
A revenue of 100.000 spread over 2 years wouldn’t be enough to support me and my family. Living in a Western Europe country. I’d prefer freelancing (or a job) for income in that scenario, over making ends meet with a software product and battling off copycats and whatnot. It should grow month over month and if it stalls for a year+ at low revenue, that’s most likely bad and I’d kill it, considering it a mediocre success! Hope that makes sense :)
I think the first $70-80k were in the first year, then I made about 60 from games over the following 2 years.... if my memory is correct, and I think it is.
$100k in revenue is a lot less than $100k in gross salary (let alone net) - probably more like $65k/year which is less than you can earn as a developer as an employee or freelancer (depending on where you are of course, but even here in Berlin you'd earn more than that and in US tech hubs you could earn 3x what you'd earn for the same job in Berlin).
If they are really senior & in a US tech hubs total comp from a FAANG could be almost 10x that.
I’m not sure if I want to share the titles, but the games were in the sports category. First of their kind on Android Market before it became Google Play. They were really feature heavy and bug-free. One of them sat at top 3 in Android Market and Google Play sports category for several months. Then about 10 of the top 50 games were all the exact same type of game.
My second game was more of a golf game, and I knew there was competition, but I put a “play my other games” link in the free version of my most popular game which had about 3 million free downloads and that propelled sales.
No blog or twitter. Just placement in the Google Play Store and having been first of their kind.
I think Apple makes it easy, but we were only on Android at the time, and it took months to finally pay all our taxes. I was sending pennies to counties. It was awful.
Thanks for sharing!
Regarding 1): I can recommend the combination “Fastspring” for order processing and taxes (nothing to worry about and super easy setup) and LimeLM for software protection; dynamic license key generation is super easy in conjunction w/ Fastspring :-)
Hard to say. Being one of the first games of its kind, the free version got to about a million downloads really fast. I didn’t get many emails even with that many players because I was really careful to make it bug free and work on most devices, but I’d say the real hate mail started rolling in as soon as the nice new Samsung phones were rolled out and my game didn’t look as good on those, and also, Android finally had some mass market appeal and it was more than just the geeks who had android phones.... it was everybody.
My game was originally designed to work on the G1 phone. Which was an awesome little phone.
So, even though I was making money, I still wanted out. The reasons came down to those listed below:
1) Taxes.
I wonder if it's easier now, but back then, I had to manually pay individual counties in my state, I had to pay individual states, and and then there were countries. I chose not to sell my game in any non-U.S. country just because of this. So, the tax nightmare wasn't something I was interested in, and was a big part of exiting the game selling business.
2) Make updates or create something new?
I originally did well updating my game. It kept people interested, and seemed to spur new sales somehow, but working on the SAME game for months and months and only making minor updates was not fun. It was work. So, I decided to make more games. I had one game make about another $30K, but everything else didn't sell at all. This was incredibly discouraging.
3) Reviews and Customer Support
When you are dependent on game sales, you check your reviews daily, and you freak out about anything less than 5 stars. Every mean comment hits hard. Customers start writing you, and some of them are crazy. I received death threats for removing a small feature for example. I also received CONSTANT questions about getting my game to work on different devices and computers. I couldn't keep up efficiently.
4) Daily Sales Stress
I would watch daily sales like a hawk. If an hour was slow, I'd stress. If a day was slow, I'd panic. It all had to just end. I couldn't market all day every day and work on new features and new games, so I was at the mercy of the app stores and it made me nuts.
5) Sales slowed
Finally, sales started slowing because of all the competition to my game (maybe). Other devs saw it doing well and a bunch of clones started showing up. Some even used my assets. Some Just added an "!" after the name of my game and were somehow using my code. I wasn't getting sales because my game had been out for a while, and then there was pirating and fakes. I know some people have their own opinion about pirating, but I would get emails from people telling me my game gave them a virus, then when we got down to it, they had stolen it from some shady site and still wanted support and to blame me for installing an infected game.
So, all that being said, yeah, making okay money in the game industry just wasn't enough to make me want to continue, but I REALLY like to make games, so part of me wants to try again anyway. Perhaps learning from these experiences will make the next adventure a little easier, who knows?