October Economic Update

Just got the numbers in for October, so here's the economic update for the month.

Tl;dr: The game is down 4000 USD this year, which isn't critical just yet, but something that needs to be reversed so we can at least break even this year, and avoid having to scale back on development. So any support is greatly appreciated!

As I'll be sharing this outside of Patreon, a quick introduction for those of you who haven't seen them before. Since this Spring, I've been posting the economic results for each month here on Patreon. AMQ is entirely self founded, meaning I only got the money earned by the game to spent on developing and running the game (server costs, artist commissions and salary for me and Sheepy). As Next World Games is a company, running out of money a month isn't an option, as that would mean bankruptcy. To avoid this, I aim towards having a decent amount of money in the bank (around 15k USD), which can then dip during months with bad sales, and recover doing months with good sales. But this does all require the game overall turns a profit or break evens, otherwise it would slowly bleed money. Which leads into the update for October.

So the overall result for October was 1500 USD in the red, which combined with the bad September months puts the game at around 4000 USD in the red for the year. This isn't at the critical state yet, but I was hoping October would turn a profit, and we really need to turn this around to avoid ending back up in the same situation as April (where the game was down 7000 USD).
So if you're able to support the game (backing the Patreon, buying tickets or donating to the Avatar Drive) it would be a huge help! If just 5% of AMQ players spent $5 a month, the game would easily break even, so any support is greatly appreciated!

To end on a positive note, my overall goal for this year is to end up breaking at least even, which I think is very doable. October actually had rather good sales, but ended up in the negative due to a sale tax payment to EU (this happens every 3 month) and a yearly bookkeeping bill, next month I'll also be receiving a tax refund (happens every 3 month as well), which should help improve the situation. That, combined with the amazing support I see from all of you, I believe should be able to push us back in the green before the end of the year! And for 2025 we'll hopefully stay in the green all year, allowing me to invest more into the game, really want to increase Sheepy hours (he's only part-time atm) so help speed up the development, as well as bring in a UI/UX designer to help overhaul the entire games UI.

So thanks for reading this entire block of text, and supporting the game!