How well did your first game sell on the market?

@bgillisp going by number of reviews alone I'd say the game sold somewhat well, and definitely brought in a lot more money than the average RPGM game.

Steamspy (yes, I know Steamspy isn't accurate, I'm using it for a ballpark estimate, don't shoot me) reports that the game probably has less than 20,000 purchases. Looking at the game's official website, it appears the game was a team effort. In the end, I doubt the developers "made bank" off of it, but If I had to take a wild guess, the game was probably a financial success--not enough to retire off of, but successful nonetheless.

@Yitzi Litt I wish I had good advice for you. I wouldn't call the $4.99 pricetag "trashy" honestly, and IMO there's nothing wrong with having a shorter game. Also my understanding is that it's bad mojo to raise the pricetag of a game, so I'd stick with $4.99 if I were you.

Just glancing at your Steam page, I don't see anything inherently "wrong" with it; seems like the description of your game and everything matches your art and gameplay. My honest, somewhat-but-not-really-educated, guess is that your game just failed to hit a good niche. The surreal games niche, maybe, but I'm not aware if that niche even exists or how many people exist in it, lol.

@Yitzi Litt : I'd say you are doing fine honestly. My research seems to show the stall out point overall is near 1000 copies. Though that was also 2 years ago when I did that, so it is probably lower now.

Plus as I mentioned in another post I did reverse math with an RPGMaker game on Steam using the global achievements % and how much they all went up when I got them (I beat the game in one day), and I came up with it sold 45 whole copies. Just 45. Though 90 is plausible if someone else beat the game the same day I did and started at the same spot and got the achievements at about the same moment I did, but that's not too likely to occur too often, so I'd be shocked if it was honestly higher than 90.

Not that well it would seem.

http://steamspy.com/app/818610

If we were generous and assumed they've sold 10,000 copies, that would be $300K. Take out another generous 50% to factor steam's cut and discounts and you've got $150K.

Depending on how many developers the game had, that really wouldnt be bad especially considering the game hasn't been out for even a year yet. Buuuut that's assuming it even sold 10,000 copies.

Overall I'd bet the game definitely made the developers some money, plenty more than the average RPGM user.

Is there any alternative to Steam Spy? I don't want to spent money on Patreon just to see some data about this game.:aswt:

What? The data I linked is free.

Ah, never mind. I didn't noticed that there are the total owners numbers in the left side, in really small letters, alongside many other things. :guffaw:

20k is really something though!:eek: (Assuming it reached this amount)

That's 0 to 20K. So it could be a dozen sales. Judging by the follower count, I'd say it's not doing so well. Doesn't tell you how much each sale was either.

Will be a bunch of free keys and discounted sales also.

I would say they sold around 1000 copies based on the number of followers and achievement statistics.

Not too bad if it were pocket money, but overall a commercial fail.

Achievement statistics only get you < 1000 no matter what game though, due to the percents only going to 0.1%. It would have to go to 0.01% to get better than that. So all it does is confirm it is at least near 1000, but it could be well over that and we'd never know that way.

Though, if someone buys the game and when you get an achievement and the % doesn't go up at all for all achievements, that means it is at least > 5000 or so, as it needs to be that much to not even budge it by 0.1% with 1 person getting an achievement.

Though, I do think those updates are delayed too. When I did that with that one game, mine didn't even show up in the global % for 4 hours. Then they all did at once.

My game sold 1,9k copies since end of april until now. Most of them during this years summer sale! You'll usually make most of your sales during the steam sales.

My game's in early access right now, so it might not help you too much info wise.

2 years of itch =16 sold (hasn't sold anything in over half a year)
1 year of Steam = 20 sold

May I ask what your game is? That's about twice as good as I'm doing, so congrats! :)

It's in my signature (ceress and orea). A lot depends on presentation, price, advertisements, theme, genre, etc.

EDIT Oh and luck.

My games generally always sell several thousands of copies at least. My more popular ones sell around 10K range.

@Tuomo L mind sharing which are the better selling ones? I could guess but I'd love to see if I'm right. If you don't feel like it it's ok. Congrats on the sales.

Nice! Sounds like you're actually able to make living from them, then?

Two especially stand out

My fastest selling game: Border of her Heart
My most sold game: Save Your Mother


I do, I pay tax, rent and food from it.

Do you mind sharing your marketing secrets? :biggrin:

Although I reached over 120k sales with my games up to this date, these were mostly from bundles. When it comes to sell it directly on Steam store, I don't go so well.