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Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

monogame.net

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Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#31

Post by Wowfunhappy »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #11
bhaney wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://steam-revenue-calculator.com/app/413150/stardew-vall...

This should really put any AAA studio to shame. A single developer sold half a billion dollars on Steam alone.

A winning lottery ticket would have an even better return on investment. Good luck with that business strategy.

(To be clear, Stardew Valley is a great game. But "making a breakout indie game" really does feel akin to winning the lottery to me, even if the game is fundamentally great.)

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#32

Post by giancarlostoro »

jasonlotito wrote: post #29
giancarlostoro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it incredibly rare? We've seen time and time again in the last few years, really basic indie games overtake AAA games in sales on Steam. Schedule One is another one which had 450 thousand concurrent players not very long after its launch. It seems AAA game studios are missing what gamers want at every turn. There's an uptick in indie devs that have broken through the barriers with good gameplay despite the graphic…

> Is it incredibly rare? Yes. It's incredibly rare. And suggesting otherwise is silly. Go ahead. Compare all the indie games released and see how often they succeed. Sure, you can find successful ones, but you are ignoring those that do not succeed. There is a name for that, you know—survivorship bias.

I'm not claiming it's every indie game I'm saying its not quite as rare as you suggest, I look at new releases on Steam all the time, there's less indie games than you think being released. More than there probably should be, but its not like tens of thousands a day or week or even in a month. Its about 800 a month. That's rare if anything, not "incredibly rare"

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#33

Post by kevinh »

benoau wrote: post #23
doug_life wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“In Feb. 2024, Stardew Valley reached 30 million copies sold, and if we assume each copy sold for $15, that means that the game could have generated a revenue of $450 million. A modest 10 percent profit margin puts ConcernedApe’s earnings at $45 million, a number that is likely to increase in the future.” Source: https://dotesports.com/stardew-valley/news/how-much-money-di...

TBH the profit margin on this game is probably closer to 100% than 10%, it was a solo-dev game so never much overhead, I think one guy was hired to work on it.

Valve's 30% cut would lower it substantially. Taxes might put it beneath 50%.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#34

Post by ehnto »

benoau wrote: post #23
doug_life wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“In Feb. 2024, Stardew Valley reached 30 million copies sold, and if we assume each copy sold for $15, that means that the game could have generated a revenue of $450 million. A modest 10 percent profit margin puts ConcernedApe’s earnings at $45 million, a number that is likely to increase in the future.” Source: https://dotesports.com/stardew-valley/news/how-much-money-di...

TBH the profit margin on this game is probably closer to 100% than 10%, it was a solo-dev game so never much overhead, I think one guy was hired to work on it.

All the game markets take huge cuts. Steam is 30% if I recall correctly.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#35

Post by foxrider »

benoau wrote: post #23
doug_life wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“In Feb. 2024, Stardew Valley reached 30 million copies sold, and if we assume each copy sold for $15, that means that the game could have generated a revenue of $450 million. A modest 10 percent profit margin puts ConcernedApe’s earnings at $45 million, a number that is likely to increase in the future.” Source: https://dotesports.com/stardew-valley/news/how-much-money-di...

TBH the profit margin on this game is probably closer to 100% than 10%, it was a solo-dev game so never much overhead, I think one guy was hired to work on it.

Steam takes 30%, other stores take 10-20%

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#36

Post by QuantumNomad_ »

juujian wrote: post #2

I don't want to assume, but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios (spare Valve). This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame.

Epic Games has a program called MegaGrants where they give a bunch of money to various projects.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants

For example they gave $250k to the Godot game engine project in 2020.

https://godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-was-awarded-epi...

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#37

Post by jasonjmcghee »

benoau wrote: post #23
doug_life wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“In Feb. 2024, Stardew Valley reached 30 million copies sold, and if we assume each copy sold for $15, that means that the game could have generated a revenue of $450 million. A modest 10 percent profit margin puts ConcernedApe’s earnings at $45 million, a number that is likely to increase in the future.” Source: https://dotesports.com/stardew-valley/news/how-much-money-di...

TBH the profit margin on this game is probably closer to 100% than 10%, it was a solo-dev game so never much overhead, I think one guy was hired to work on it.

Well he made a 10% deal with a publisher iirc and steam gets 30% - so that's a chunk right there

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#38

Post by CuriouslyC »

fourneau wrote: post #14
juujian wrote: post #2

I don't want to assume, but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios (spare Valve). This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame.

Definitely indie. It was a solo project until launch.

It's an epic story. Grinding on a solo project for 4 years is pretty daunting, I'm glad the universe rewarded him.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#39

Post by PurpleRamen »

willis936 wrote: post #12
mpeg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stardew is probably one of the most (if not the most) popular game ever made with MonoGame AAA studios don't really use MonoGame.

Their point wasn't about MonoGame. Do AAA studios really not use any open source tools?

AAA usually goes with AAA-tools and frameworks. So Unity, Unreal Engine or even their own engine. OSS might be used, but for smaller parts or as tools for producing their stuff (like browser, editor, etc.). So while they sometimes donate, there is not much reason to give a big sum to a single project. They might be even donating more overall, but separated on multiple different projects.

Re: Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

#40

Post by Aurornis »

juujian wrote: post #2

I don't want to assume, but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios (spare Valve). This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame.

> but I don't recollect any contributions of that magnitude from large studios

Epic has a grant program that has given out thousands of grants, including over a million dollars to the Blender project

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants

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