He earned $60 per hour and billed (himself) 820 hours. Title should be changed to "How I earned $42,500 making a bad VR game". And he should tax it.
Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game
61–70 of 83 posts
Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game
#62It cost 43,200 to make and it sold 42,500 net, that's ok if he did it himself, for a first effort, nicely done.
Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game
#63I lost $10 reading this post.
Earned $5 laughing at this comment.
Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game
#64It cost 43,200 to make and it sold 42,500 net, that's ok if he did it himself, for a first effort, nicely done.
It didn’t sell 42,500 net. He writes that his net profit was -42,500. Note the minus in front. He sold ~100 copies.
Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game
#65Kind of pretty much clickbait, since no real money was expended across bank accounts between two or more separate parties. The author expounds on an appraisal of hypothetical money, if one imagine's that he paid himself all labor costs to perform the work. He spent several months working on a video game that didn't do well, and made zero dollars. Did I lose $6,000 dollars on a hypothetical bitcoin I never paid for in…
Makes me vomit in my mouth when I read this sort of self-sufficient "I payed myself $60 / hour". You know what? An amount can only be quoted if you're PAYING someone else, it's only then when it stings. These sort of entitled-clueless individuals wouldn't pay $6 / hour for an UpWork contractor to make a game 10x better than their crap.
For accounting purposes he likely did actually pay himself the money, transferring it from the company to himself, and adding the perceived value of the game to tho company, which can write off the loss going forwards.
Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game
#66"Platform holders need to make it easier for VR game developers to get their games onto their platforms and reach the people who want the game they’re making. This goes beyond just financial, this goes towards publicity, mentorship and more." This point needs to be fleshed out more. What is say the Oculus App store not doing that the iOS app store is? As a user (not a developer) of both, I'm not seeing a difference.
It doersn't really - The poster made a crappy game, didn't market it, didn't test it, and seems to blame others. There are 3 reviews, all negative, with show stopping bugs even 6 months after they first reviewed it. Poster says he didn't market it until 6 weeks before release. This is just shovelware, unfortunately
> and seems to blame others.
Where do you get that from? He writes about his own faliures and even goes on about how he failed to play test sufficiently and did a poor job of marketing. How does that come off as blaming others to you?
Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game
#67phrasing it as losing money this way is dishonest attention seeking. If a friend told me a group lost $10k making a game over the weekend, i'd freak out
It is a business loss. And if the business paid this though borrowed money it could end up going bankrupt, yet he’d still have the 42k$ that his company paid him.
Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Makes me vomit in my mouth when I read this sort of self-sufficient "I payed myself $60 / hour". You know what? An amount can only be quoted if you're PAYING someone else, it's only then when it stings. These sort of entitled-clueless individuals wouldn't pay $6 / hour for an UpWork contractor to make a game 10x better than their crap.
For accounting purposes he likely did actually pay himself the money, transferring it from the company to himself, and adding the perceived value of the game to tho company, which can write off the loss going forwards.
Where I live (EU), if I pay myself "for accounting purposes" $60 / hour, then I own the state $24 / hour in taxes. Did he actually pay =~ $20,000 in taxes? If so, respect, he did pay himself $60 / hour. But I bet a castle that he "payed himself" $60 / hour just like I pay myself a castle per hour when I do side work. (Which is also why I so nonchalantly can afford to bet one :P)
Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game
#69The story is informative -- VR games don't sell well, except if you can time to new hardware -- but the math behind the $42.5k number is dubious. Can I value all my hobby projects at $60/hour too? Over a million USD accumulated losses during my adult life so far...
I'd be happy with $60/hr for my day job.
Especially post-tax.
Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game
#70Kind of pretty much clickbait, since no real money was expended across bank accounts between two or more separate parties. The author expounds on an appraisal of hypothetical money, if one imagine's that he paid himself all labor costs to perform the work. He spent several months working on a video game that didn't do well, and made zero dollars. Did I lose $6,000 dollars on a hypothetical bitcoin I never paid for in…
He invested, on purpose and with the goal to make money, his time as a software engineer. The amount of time is not nothing and his hourly rate is reasonable. It is not wrong to say he lost it
In all likelyhood all he paid himself was the price of his game ($2.99) times the number of units sold (about 100). So about $0.375 / hour. Given the horrendous competitivity and sheer statistics his efforts at making a profit were a powerball gamble. No way he didn't bet $42,000 on it.