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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

#41

Post by vasco »

rvnx wrote: post #19
MangoToupe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This indy developer (is that label fair?) is putting AAA studios to shame. For the hundredth time. He's an extremely rare person focused on quality, value, and competency. And he clearly just loves his own game Edit: Sorry? Pay for what, and risk what why? AAA studios simply cannot deliver good value in comparison. The donation is unrelated—or perhaps, arguably, open source makes this productivity possible.

Beyond love, what you prefer ? Pay 100K USD, or put at risk your 500M USD project ? Edit: if the engine is not maintained, there can be compatibility issues, it can go abandoned and lack new features, etc. It's the technical pillar of the product, like Unity.

Is it so hard to accept someone else might give away money for a charitable reason rather than because of fear?

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

#42

Post by geon »

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.

Presumably he spent years working on it. His own time should be subtracted from the revenue too.

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

#43

Post by giancarlostoro »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #31
giancarlostoro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Your chances are much more higher building your own game than playing the lottery endlessly. You forget that guy who made Stardew Valley had to self-teach everything he knew, till he got to the point he quit his full time job. I don't see in what universe you have a better chance to win the lottery, than to build a successful indie game if you truly put your heart into it. Some of the greatest inventions didn't come to us because someone won the lottery, they experimented and kept going. Look at Duck Duck Go, he had 30 other projects that 'failed' before Duck Duck Go succeeded.

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

#44

Post by edent »

pwdisswordfishy wrote: post #26
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...

Why would 1 unit of this game have a "profit margin" of 10%? It's a video game. He's not selling canned goods.

Of the purchase price that the end-user pays, the retailer has to pay tax. That knocks off a variable percentage. It would be 20% in the UK.

There's also the cost of selling through Steam / Google Play / Whatever - typically 30%.

I assume the developer has some professional expenses - an accountant at a minimum, probably a lawyer, certainly insurance. Maybe they also have a PR team, advertising, and the like. I don't know whether they pay for testers, translators, and things like that.

Then we get on to things like buying a new development machine, going to tech conferences, taking an educational course, backups, and all the other things that a business needs to spend on in order to be effective.

Maybe a profit margin of 10% is unrealistically low - but developing software has legitimate costs. The margin is never going to be 100%.

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

#46

Post by benoau »

geon wrote: post #42
benoau wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Presumably he spent years working on it. His own time should be subtracted from the revenue too.

Hundreds of millions minus hundreds of thousands of dollars lol.

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

#47

Post by tracker1 »

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.

30% off the top for most stores (Valve/Steam, Apple/iPhone, Google/Android, etc), then around 50% taxes between state, local... some fixed expenses and overhead. It's probably well under 20% in the bank after all is said and done. That said, it's still a lot of money.

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

#48

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

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.

The game has also been on sale numerous times for less than $15. It is currently available on Steam for $9

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

#49

Post by barrenko »

A true Christmas story! Somewhat unrelated, could someone provide insight into the following -

"MonoGame is a "bring your own tools" kind of framework, which means that it provides the building blocks to build your own engine and tools, but it isn't quite an engine itself.

If you are expecting a scene editor (like Unity or Unreal), MonoGame is not that.

If you love coding and understanding how things work under the hood, MonoGame might be what you are looking for. And fear not, getting a game running with MonoGame only takes a few minutes."

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

#50

Post by Zekio »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #30
snowram wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those games are a grain of sand in the infinite desert that is the indie game world. The vast majority of indie games on Steam are barely even noticed by anyone.

Schedule One sold more copies than a brand new Assassins Creed game at launch on Steam, Minecraft has sold more copies than most AAA games, including GTA 5.

Minecraft has sold like 350 million copies which is more than second and third place combined IIRC if you look at the top best selling games
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