“I thought I could ship at least 700 units to stay in business”

I'm from Romania. I used to make around 1.5k euros monthly from my last job + a small side gig. An average salary here is between 300-600 euros. My mortgage is around 200 euros. I was in the extremely lucky position to be the tech field and do so well pay-wise. When I took the decision to quit my job and finish my game the following statements were true:

- I had money saved up to pay 4 months of mortage + living expenses + a few beers in the weekends

- I was making games for about 10 years now and launched a few games before hand, smaller projects that had success (for me). I worked on bigger titles in the industry at a few big studios and even at small ones.

- And my game was supposed to sell 300 copies in the first month so that together with my savings I could test the waters and scratch an itch I had.

I was in a position that few other devs are: I live in a low cost country. Again from the scores I heard in Seattle and other US cities 1 month of mortgage there would cover my expenses for a year! I had the benefit of being able to live off of 500 euros a month which ties back to the previous sentence. And I had a game I was close to completing (I started it last year but stopped when I went to my last job).

I targeted a small niche in a specific subgenre with a backup niche in the roguelike genre. Dungeon crawlers are indeed a small niche but not so small that I couldn't sell 700 copies. My biggest problem was having no experience with the way steam works right now (as opposed to the experience I had when I was freelancing a few years back after Gameloft).

If you google right now that average amount of copies and indie game sales on steam google points out 12,000. Not that it's not true anymore (because it isn't) but from where I was standing (and a few other devs who have other games in progress) moving 300 to 700 copies should be easy.

And I targeted my niche specifically: Older gamers (even developers), who don't care about the graphics that much and who want a short, fast game they could play during breaks (or in my case while the compiler is busy).

I went over this facts quite a few times and it sounded doable. Worst case scenario come January I would go in search for another job. And this is were I was wrong, it sounded way too good and easy. At worst I'd finally scratch steam off my todo list and just do software again.

Now I understood, I took a gamble and it turned out to be worse, way worse than I ever expected. I could loose my apartment and all the money I put into it. And I was afraid of screwing even more things up (when things go wrong, they go wrong it seems).

A few days before launching my games (and way after the dice have been cast) I saw tweets from other developers on why people shouldn't risk their lives and go full time. And I thought: "It can't be that bad". Turns out I can't just release a game nowadays and have it sell directly. I was banking a bit on getting covered by a few specific niche websites during launch (it didn't happen). And after I realized what hole I dug myself into I only had one thing on my mind: "There's a bunch of people like out there who still think it's 2012-2013 when you could move decent money in releasing a small, niche, game". And there are. I have been speaking to a ton of devs since the post went live that did not see the reality factor here. The whole point was to warn a few other people that it's not at easy. And I wanted to give me as an example because, again, I had a ton of things going for me: Low mortgage, I can live on peanuts and I don't need to sell a whole lot of copies + some savings and a backup plan come January.

And with all the things going for me I still failed so what chances does someone else living in a higher cost country to succeed with a similar plan like mine?

I said this a few times since release on twitter, I just wish someone would have woken me up from my dream. Those tweets from my friends/devs came too late for me. But maybe with the exposure this story is getting I can keep another passionate yet fool-ish dev from going through what I went through this month.

Edit: Small edit. The amount of devs who reached out to me with a game in production for about 2-3 years - part time for a few - is huge. And they are all scared because the math they did at the beginning does not line up with where things are today. Back then STEAM WOULD guarantee a huge amount of eyeballs on your game. Now all those eyeballs are split between so many releases. It's scary for many, especially those naive (like yours truly).

Edit: There's an entire article to be written about buying an apartment here when the developer pretty much has a monopoly in this part of the city. For example, you can rarely find a already-built new building (that's not in shambles and will fall at the next big-ish earthquake) to buy. Most people pay for it in advance (before it's even built) and in the end can end up with a shit hole (it happens). And you pay mortgage on a building that's not even completed.

He probably used USD for the same reason he wrote in english. 'everybody' outside the US knows, roughly, the value of a USD. Few people in the US knows the value of a a Euro.