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My Steam Game Revenue Stats

donislawdev.com

61–70 of 172 posts

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#61
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steamdb[1] gives some info on concurrent players, but only estimates for owners. Looks like they estimate number of reviewers between 5-15%. [1]: https://steamdb.info/app/1404560/graphs/

5-15% is in line with for example anecdotally observed view count vs votes on videos on YouTube. So based on that I am not surprised that video games on Steam can be expected to have a similar number of reviews relative to number of owners. Typically I expect a video on YouTube to have about 10% votes and about 1% comments. Do all reviews on Steam need to include text or can simple thumbs up/down be given without any…

> Typically I expect a video on YouTube to have about 10% votes and about 1% comments.

this is known as the 90-9-1 rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#62
post #2

"In terms of cash, it was not worth it, if we count costs (without time) + taxes, then the “earnings” from those $632 will be lower than 0. I had lost the cash, the first month is mostly the “best” month of sales, so my next month’s sales will be worse and worse, maybe a few % of my first month. Someone might be curious why I’m still keeping early access, working on the game, to be honest, I don’t believe in some mag…

You can't really make a super niche game and expect it to sell well. Nobody knows what Yerba Mate is. Nobody is searching for Yerba Mate. Also, the video is funny, but it really doesn't tell us anything about what you do. It doesn't show us the consequences of any of your decisions. Anyhow, I wish the developer all the best. I hope sales to pick up and that they enjoyed making the game.

> Nobody knows what Yerba Mate is.

I think it may depend on your region. Obviously it is very well known in South America (I first became acquainted with it about 25 years ago after being friends with someone from South America who drank tereré, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terer%C3%A9, all the time), but now I see these, https://guayaki.com/our-product-family/, all over Whole Foods in Texas, so somebody must be drinking them here.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#63

> Features: > New update = new bugs > Poor graphic and sounds I have to say the first two "features" aren't doing you any favors. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1404560/Yerba_Mate_Tycoon...

It's a joke. Not sure if that's immediately obvious to you (it's Hacker News).

Still, as a potential customer, I don't find it very encouraging. You don't see jokes like these for products that don't have bugs or do have decent graphics. Not a very good idea to draw attention to your shortcomings, even if they're expected.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#65
post #11

> At launch, I was selling my game for $3.5 (10% discount), then the price went back to the full price of $4. Why would you launch with a discount?

Sadly Steam encourages everyone to do this - if you don't get high enough in the rankings at launch you basically won't make any money, plus everyone on Steam is super accustomed to getting everything at a discount.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#66
post #3

As far as I know we users cannot see how many sales a game has from steam, so I very much appreciate the creator telling us. I often try to judge from the number of reviews if a game has made at least a few thousand bucks. This game here has 19 reviews with 420 sales, which means that 4,5% of all people have reviewed the game, which is more than I expected (I expected a ratio of about 1%). But this means that probabl…

I forget where I read it, but you usually won’t be too far off the mark if you multiply review count by 100. This won’t tell you revenue of course, but it gives you an idea. My game sold about 20k units on Steam and has 165 reviews, so there’s one anecdotal point of data.

My game has sold 7,210 units and has 99 reviews as another data point. So 72 units per review.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#67
post #3

As far as I know we users cannot see how many sales a game has from steam, so I very much appreciate the creator telling us. I often try to judge from the number of reviews if a game has made at least a few thousand bucks. This game here has 19 reviews with 420 sales, which means that 4,5% of all people have reviewed the game, which is more than I expected (I expected a ratio of about 1%). But this means that probabl…

I forget where I read it, but you usually won’t be too far off the mark if you multiply review count by 100. This won’t tell you revenue of course, but it gives you an idea. My game sold about 20k units on Steam and has 165 reviews, so there’s one anecdotal point of data.

I think you're probably right past a certain threshold of time or sales, but this one has thirty reviews.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in some countries are accustomed to using a very weird mm/dd date format, probably that's the case here?

yyyy/mm/dd is the true format because its alphabetically sortable. dd/mm/yyyy is another sensible format because the units grow in size. mm/dd/yyyy is the insane one. Idk why the US persists with it tbh.

It has flaws but it’s not “insane” or entirely illogical, it’s very clearly based on the way dates are spoken and written in English, ex. “Today is July 23rd, 2021”.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#69
post #49

In this day and age having over 400 actually paying customers is a lot! Even having 400 free users would be a lot. Now the question is - do they play the game ? Any number above 1% is good, so if there are 4 players spending a lot of time - it's a good sign. If possible ask them what they think is good about it, then update the marketing material to showcase what is good about the game.

I agree. And actually shipping a game that anyone will pay for puts you in very rare territory. The world is full of game designer wannabes.

Why are they wannabes? I don't understand why you would insult people who are trying to put out a product but failing.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#70
post #10

The game is far, far too much of a niche style game for it to even be all that popular, IMHO. I'm not quite sure what the Dev here expected to happen. It's also Early Access and it's fair to say that unless a game has broad appeal (which shop simulators don't) and hype (definitely not in this case), people tend to stay away from Early Access games from unknown developers with insubstantial catalogs. I know I do, been…

> Before the game launch, I knew that game will be a failure. I was expecting most sales from Latin America (low price), my all previous mobile games were a failure, wishlist number was low + in the first month of early access (outside of Steam) I sold 0 games copies. So, there were no success indicators. I got no problem with it, everything is running according to my plan, If my whole life is a failure, then a “failure” is something normal, it won’t affect me :-}

I'd say their expectations were pretty low, and despite that they've got a wonderfully positive attitude about the whole thing. Maybe don't be so quick to rain on that.

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