A practical guide on how to – TRY – to survive the Indieapocalypse!

Jokes apart, I thought to write a post about what’s happening in the indie world, it will be mostly focused on business so if you’re here to read news about my games, I’m sorry, probably this post won’t be much interesting!

But I can tell you that Planet Stronghold 2 will feature 4 different endings and many great plot twists so you should definitely be looking out for it, coming out soon!

Also before I get to the topic of this blog, a short reminder that there’s an Halloween sale on itch.io and my games are in it:

The older games are discounted more:
https://itch.io/s/21765/halloween-sale-2019
while the more recent games less:
https://itch.io/s/21766/halloween-sale-2019

If you’re following any indie you’d probably have heard of the latest Steam algorithm change, which lowered even more the revenues of small/medium indies. Of course, there will always be that 1% of top indies that won’t have any problem (or maybe for them the sales are even increased!) but here I’m talking about the other 99%.

First of all let’s do a simple math: let’s say in one day I sell $100 gross on Steam. Their cut is 30% but after expenses,taxes,etc. So the real net amount is more close to the 65%. OK, so we have $65 left, pretty good. Now, unless you evade taxes or live in a tax heaven country, you need to take into account that. Let’s say that is another 30% (but in most modern countries will be more like 40-50%!) and you’re left with about $40 (this is best-case scenario!). Last but not least, there’s currency conversions. Right now from USD to EUR I “lose” only another 10%, but there have been times where I was losing another 30-40% on top of that (crazy, I know).

So depending on external factors, outside my control (exchange rate, govern taxes) from $100 gross I could end up with an amount between 20-35 eur net. Even if was 35 eur x 30 days of a month, would be barely minimum wage here!! It’s not easy to make a living out of this, especially considering that nowadays making $100 gross / day on Steam is … an achievement.

The biggest impact for sure is the 30% Steam cut, which nowadays is barely justified. I think the biggest mistake was Steam direct, but this would require a separate, long discussion. Anyway, what can you do as indie? Nothing, really. If you want to make indie games, you need to use Steam. There are though a couple of extra things you can do.

1. Sell direct. Yeah I know that “nobody sells direct anymore”. But I do. And I know a few other indies that do. Often people underestimate how much fans can go to support their favorite creators. Since I use itchio, I set a custom percentage (in my case what I was paying before, so 8% of the amount). As you can imagine, from 30% of Steam cut to 8%, on each copy sold on itchio I get MUCH more money. In the end, Steam total amount is always going to be way higher, but if I can get a few sales at fullprice why shouldn’t I?
2. Use crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter. Since they take 5% only, as you can imagine getting $10,000-20,000 there instead of Steam means already gaining several thousands dollar more. It’s not easy to run a KS (I have never done it) but if you’re successful, it’s definitely worth doing. I know currently there are some issues with KS itself but I won’t go into those details, you can take as example any other crowdfunding site.
3. Use patronage systems like Patreon. In this case, to be successful, you need to provide unique stuff, keep it updated, and so on. You can also do something like funding the development of a complete game through it, providing updates for patrons. It’s very popular, especially with adult games. Of course, you must not make the mistake to look at the top sellers and think you can make that amount! But even in this case, the lower fee makes it an attractive option and even only a few bucks each month help.
4. Last but not least, cross-platform development. Just be sure to check the super-restrictive rules of other platforms like Google Play (lol you know what happened to me) but diversifying risks is a good idea in general, even if recently seems to be less worth it than was in the past.

Just remember one thing: all those systems require extra efforts. Especially if you’re just starting out. It’s not like because I make some sales on itchio, everyone else will make same amount too. I’ve in business since 15 years… you can’t expect to have same number of followers in a year or less (unless you make a hit of course, but that’s hard).

So all those things require time investment. But if you do them, you’re somewhat less dependant on just one platform (Steam) and hopefully reduce the risks of an algorithm making you go out of business!

First of all an update: work on Planet Stronghold 2 continues smoothly, I finished chapter 3 and all the “old romances” routes! But I still need to write the last chapter and part of the new romances routes. And of course, the editor needs to fix the game texts. Considering the current wordcount is 280k words, the full story will exceed 300k words for sure lol

Now back to the blog post topic: you might have noticed that subscription programs are popping up like mushrooms recently. Apple has its Apple Arcade. Google Play followed suit with Google Play Pass.

On desktop, we already have the Humble Monthly that for a fixed monthly fee gives you games each month. Microsoft is doing their Game Pass thing too. EA and Ubisoft have already a subscriptions for their own titles. And let’s not forget that Epic is giving away free games every week.

It’s the end of the world and we know it

So, is this the end of the world? How does a small niche indie survives in middle of all this? I will share some thoughts, but of course it’s just my opinion and you should take it with a grain of salt!

First of all, game devaluating is nothing new – since the first bundles showed up, that was a thing. The main difference is that with the bundles you saw the games included and a price, and then you could decide if to buy it or not. With these subscription models in practice you rely on Apple/Google/etc to pick the games for you.

Now I must make a confession: I am both Humble Monthly subscriber and Gamepass too, and maybe I’ve played 10% of the games. But I’m not the typical gamer – I stay subscribed mostly to check the game trends, what’s selling, since games picked for those offers give you (the developer) a good idea of what is popular / is selling.

In case you don’t know – some services pay a flat out fee to the developer. I know some figures and I must say, that if one of my games was picked for them, I would be very happy, since the upfront money would cover the “potential future copies lost”.

So, it’s not necessarily all bad for developers, even if of course you need to be careful about what you sign and how much to ask. No, in this case the main hurdle is getting in. Since they hand-pick the titles, we’re again in a on/off – yes/no situation. Your game is accepted? Good, here’s the cash and you can keep making games. Your game is not? You have to sell it the “old fashioned way”. Which for now, still works! But in future? That is not certain.

Give me a thousand fans!

For a niche game author like me, there’s really not much hope to get in one of those offers. Then, what’s left? the good old “thousand true fans” theory that I borrowed from Jeff Vogel (Spiderweb games), and to be honest I’m not even sure if it’s his own idea, but I heard first from him!

He says that to keep going, you only need to have a thousand of loyal fans that will (more or less!) buy anything you make. Then doing a simple math, if a game is $25 x 1000 fans = $25.000. Which, to be clear, is really NOT a lot of money once portals’ cut, taxes, expenses are taken into account, for a game that took you a year to make. But that is a sort of “safe money”, then there will be also the other non-fans potential sales.

Of course that’s easier said than done! While I am lucky enough to still have many fans, all those enticing offers might take away some, also simply because not everyone has enough money to buy/support all their favorite authors (I know this well since I was a teenager too once!).

Anyway my summary is: those subscription models probably are here to stay. The few titles going in will be blessed and get good money. The gap between the 1% of devs making lot of money and the remaining 99% will grow bigger and bigger. Many companies will go bankrupt, including many indies, but I still think that “pay-once” full price games won’t go away, as well as seasonal sales and discounts. They simply coexist one next to another.

A final consideration

Also a final consideration: people who like games and spend money on them, now with $9.99/month can get most of the AAA titles and famous indies with the various gamepass. Which means they can actually save money. Money they can use to buy niche indie games like – totally random example – mine, which will very likely never end up in one of those subscriptions services! So maybe, there’s still some light at the end of the tunnel.