may update + one year of full-time indie dev!
Added 2024-05-01 02:01:41 +0000 UTCto celebrate one year of full-time indie dev (technically since the start of april but i was waiting for some data from gog before making this post), the monthly patreon update is viewable for everyone π
it's been a long year for me but i have survived & i can continue doing this full-time, with a big part of it due to everyone supporting me on patreon, so thank you! you can see the revenue split on the graph above, but patreon is 11.2% of my entire yearly income. (steam is just very very powerful too... 40%...!)
i made a longer post about it on my blog since patreon doesn't have inline images in the way i want it to... i have more graphs & data &c. at the link, so check it out!
https://tnywndr.cafe/posts/2024-05-01-one-year-of-full-time-indie-dev
now for the usual update - this is what i'm working on this month:
translation updates for A TAVERN FOR TEA & you're just imagining it & a pet shop after dark - i won't be releasing this right away since i am waiting to get updates for multiple languages, but i am slowly working on them!
marron's day! i am working more on this as usual... originally i wanted to have an updated demo in time for steam next fes in june, but i don't think i'll make it in time so i'm now aiming for the next steam next fes in autumn
a postcard for patreon as usual!
honestly i just feel very fortunate to be able to keep doing this. here's hoping i will back next year with another similar update!
have a happy start of may!
Comments
thanks so much for your support! i hope i can keep it going.
npckc
2024-05-01 23:31:51 +0000 UTCthanks! and yeah i don't really know much about the mobile cycle or actually getting people to pay for my games there haha! good to know about the submission process... i hate the steam capsule process so anything worse than that sounds very annoying.
npckc
2024-05-01 23:31:25 +0000 UTCyeah steam just has far more users than any other platform, at least to my knowledge! and thank you for sharing my games with your friends β¨
npckc
2024-05-01 23:28:54 +0000 UTCI'm so happy to see you've made it so far! I still remember seeing your announcement for going indie. Glad to see your diversification strategy worked. Always happy to support you <3
Krzesimir Samborski
2024-05-01 14:15:31 +0000 UTCcongratulations on your first year full indie! i was going to write everything i know about iOS/Android, as i worked for a few years making mobile stuff... but realised it's not really relevant. as your games are not about the cycle of user acquisition and picking people up by their feet and shaking all the change out of their pockets... apple does have a very annoying submission process fwiw. almost makes you long for steam's long list of randomly sized images.
Alexander Taylor
2024-05-01 09:28:58 +0000 UTCHeck yeah, so glad its been working out! I know steam doesn't give as high of a percent back as some other places, but I guess that's the power of just having so many more users. And of patrons like me buying the game for their friends. I'll happily accept the free key but that won't stop me from just spending the saved money on you anyway XD
Goblin University
2024-05-01 09:18:18 +0000 UTCIt might be possible that people get emails for the Big sales like Spring sales and Winter sales, but they don't get emails when just one game is on sale, or when one publisher is doing a sale. Looking through my email history, those are the only two sales emails I've gotten from itch in the past ~6 months. For consoles especially, I'm sure a lot of people still buy game discs/cartridges in-store, and they don't even know the digital store exists. So that's discoverability problem number one. Well...the last time I used a console was 7+ years ago, so maybe things are different nowadays haha. Glad to hear the itch sign-up process is smooth and easy! I thought Steam would have made things much easier than, say, GOG, but I guess not. There was a time when Steam was a pretty exclusive club... The bureaucracy for consoles does not surprise me. I read a little about it when Godot was looking into making console ports possible. Open distribution is a tough problem. You've got that model on Windows and macOS, where you can download software from everywhere you want (or you can use the Mac App Store/Windows Store) and a segment of people will download malware. On Android, you have the option to download apps from anywhere but the Google Play store is the one-stop shop. I didn't think most people strayed from Google Play, but I guess you getting emails about it proves they do... Apple's trying to hold onto the closed distribution model as tightly as possible by ensuring they get their cut even if you distribute outside of the store, still requiring you to pay them $100/year, and requiring all third-party stores to be approved. I think they should drop the $100/year part, but the requirement to approve third-party stores could be a good thing for security. Just being able to distribute an app executable from the developer's own website like on the desktop would be ideal (though annoying for users), but not permitted under Apple's requirements. It remains to be seen how this will play out. I think it's a good thing overall that Apple is being forced to allow "sideloading". Personally, I have my Android phone setup to install/update a few apps from Google Play and everything else from Github or the developer's site directly like Signal messenger's website with Obtainium, but I wouldn't call myself the average user.
James North
2024-05-01 05:22:46 +0000 UTCoh hm! i have been told by people they don't get notifications for sales on itch, so maybe it is some kind of setting that people have or don't have on... thanks for sharing! i think also itch is a bigger share for me because i don't actually make that much overall in total - it would be very different for a dev whose games sell more. i think the difference between itch/steam is pretty exponential at least from what i've heard from other devs! i have games on xbox & playstation as well actually, but steam is just really really big. i think consoles also have the problem where it's hard to find games you don't already know unless they are very popular because people don't 'browse' the store as they do steam. for the process i think i would say easiest is itch > steam/gog >>> console. itch really doesn't have any big hurdles to signing up but steam & gog have a lot more stuff you have to deal with tax-wise &c. before anything is done, & the pages go through checks & things that itch doesn't. console is a whole other thing where it's a lot more complicated & slow & patches go through checks every time. i am curious about the sideloading for iphone! i really want there to be more options for both android & iphone for different stores (though android has the issue where all my games available on google play are also available as weird hacked versions on alternative stores, potentially with added malware?? i get emails about it sometimes & have to tell people that if they're not downloading my games from me, i can't really help them...)
npckc
2024-05-01 04:47:59 +0000 UTCThis is really interesting! Thanks for posting it. I'm actually kind of surprised itch's percentage is as big as it is. All things considered, it's pretty niche. It surprises me more that GOG was only at 2% (even if you double GOG's revenue for the whole year, itch earned 2% more overall). Then I realised it was because itch brings in more revenue per game, which is cool to see. I do love GOG though because it means I *know* any game I buy there is DRM-free and they've made a big impact on the industry in that respect. But I still buy npckc games from itch because I know you make more money that way. You were the one who got me into itch in the first place ^_^ But re: itch not notifying you about sales. I've gotten emails about sales before. For example, I got the Winter Sale email in December and bought a game. I got the Spring Sale email in March and bought Casting Hearts from itch. So that's at least one game bought from itch on sale because of an email :) I'm also surprised how much more revenue Steam generates for you than consoles (which is just Switch now, right? Or are your games on Xbox/Playstation too? I don't use consoles haha). The revenue split obviously has an impact, but 40%? Man. They are incredibly dominant though. Steam really is a great platform. They'll even make most games work on Linux automatically with Proton if you don't provide a Linux build, and they're working on doing the same for ChromeOS. That's not something any other platform does. How is the sign-up/game update process for Steam? Easier than GOG/Console? I hear itch puts a lot of effort into their developer experience, so maybe not as good as them... Regarding iOS: I think the $100/year license to be a developer is a rip-off, especially compared to Android. They have the users to make it worth it depending on your app, to be fair (the iOS market is bigger than all Android devices put together in some countries). But things are changing, just a little. In Europe, Apple is being forced to allow "sideloading", or installing apps from places other than the App Store for the iPhone and iPad. It's likely going to be a few years before the situation improves a lot and publishing elsewhere becomes a viable option. Or for this change to ever make its way out of Europe, since I don't even live there. Importantly for me, it means I can release apps that are open source for iOS users. Apple's app store forbids some open source apps. But note that I don't actually develop or publish any apps currently, so it's all second-hand info. I just did some research in case I wanted to. This comment ended up longer than I wanted it to be...I guess stats excite me, lol. Congrats on your first year of full-time indie dev.
James North
2024-05-01 04:38:06 +0000 UTCthanks! i'm really happy about it too
npckc
2024-05-01 03:49:50 +0000 UTCCongrats!!! I'm so happy to hear you'll be able to keep up the full time indie deving :)
Lily W
2024-05-01 03:30:51 +0000 UTCπ
npckc
2024-05-01 03:04:24 +0000 UTCπ₯³β¨οΈ
Chloe
2024-05-01 02:54:46 +0000 UTCthanks!! π
npckc
2024-05-01 02:13:01 +0000 UTChappy one year!! Youβre doing a great job!!
Derek
2024-05-01 02:06:04 +0000 UTC
