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Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

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Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#111

Post by monideas »

markdown wrote: post #99
monideas wrote: post #8

You should make a youtube series or a long series of blog posts explaining your journey from a personal perspective, the emotional ups and downs on working on this instead of getting a new job, from a technical perspective, and from a business perspective. What types of skills did you have to learn, what were the technical challenges, what pieces of code are you particularly proud of. What was your marketing strategy…

Or even better, he should just come over to your place, crash in your garage and spend his days teaching you how to make a game, right?

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#112

Post by [deleted] »

newobj wrote: post #28
tombert wrote: post #19

Out of curiosity, what kind of margins do you get when you sell a game on Steam? Like, what percentage of a sale ends up in your bank account (pre-taxes). Also, how do Steam sales affect that? Congrats on making a game to completion, and doubly so for making something that gets fairly popular. Making a real game has been on my bucket list for about as long as I've known how to program, and I haven't completely given…

Between returns, taxes, and other stuff, I think you can model at ~55% of gross Steam sales. Then, whatever your split w/ your publisher is, on top of that. So I think it's easy for ppl to severely overestimate how much a dev is actually earning by just multiplying units times price :) I think in general the uptick of sales volume more than offsets the discount during a Steam sale. There's a reason Steam sales have a…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#115

Post by kbenson »

codetrotter wrote: post #109
switz wrote: post #4

200,000 units is a far cry from just a 'minor hit' - congratulations! During the project, what was the biggest instinct you had that was ultimately validated by its success, but still surprised you? What was a lesson you learned that you didn't expect? How was working with a publisher? What did they do right and what did they do wrong?

I suppose that when your previous employer has over 3B users (FB alone, not even counting IG and WA and whatever else they have going on), 200k might seem like a small number of people :P But I agree. OP, 200k is a hugely respectable number for a game or any piece of software for that matter. I’d be happy if 200 people used any of mine, never mind the k :p Congrats! :)

Hey, Meta has something like 67k employees for those 3.35 billion users (for simple stats I could find), and thats. That's 50k users to an employee. I think this dev is doing quite well by those standards. :)

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#116

Post by monideas »

newobj wrote: post #50
monideas wrote: post #8

You should make a youtube series or a long series of blog posts explaining your journey from a personal perspective, the emotional ups and downs on working on this instead of getting a new job, from a technical perspective, and from a business perspective. What types of skills did you have to learn, what were the technical challenges, what pieces of code are you particularly proud of. What was your marketing strategy…

Appreciate the thought but that's a full time job. I have to conserve whatever energy I have to actually work on the game. (Seriously, I think a lot of devs distract themselves with this stuff. Just make your damn game.)

That type of content is extremely useful for younger developers and the publicity probably has other benefits, but it's not for everyone.

Re: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

#120

Post by guywithahat »

Not to get too personal, but how did working on a video game affect your personal life? If you worked from home, do you have a wife/kids? Was anyone upset or disappointed you were working on a game and not getting another job at a big tech company?

I don’t mean to be critical, but I’ve always faced pushback working on startups/side projects, and I’m wondering how that was for you?

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