[SAD NEWS] Ori and the Blind Forest was a Flop

Full pic? How did he go from $20 million to $2million?

it is a primitive 2d sidescroller with 0 complex world system

What 20$ million, retard? Aussie cucks made a better game for 50$k

Here's the full tweet and his rant
x.com/thomasmahler/status/1928902673459511710

Game dev economics are brutal. Let’s break it down.
You make a hit. You sell 2M copies. And you still can’t fund your next game. Here’s why:

1. Your game cost $10M to make.
A publisher funded it. They also spent $2M on marketing.
So you owe them $12M before you see a dime.

2. You price the game at $20.
But let’s be real: most sales happen during Steam discounts.
Your average sale price ends up around $10.

3. You sell 2 million copies. Success, right?
Gross revenue = $20,000,000

4. Now subtract platform fees.
Steam takes 30%.
$20M – 30% = $14M left

5. Publisher takes first $12M to recoup dev + marketing.
You haven’t made a cent yet.

6. That leaves $2M to split.
Your deal is 70/30 — in the publisher’s favor.
You get $600K. They keep $1.4M.

7. Now subtract tools + taxes.
Engine licenses (~$15K)
Taxes (~50%)
You’re left with ~$292,500

8. So after selling 2M copies...
You, the dev, have ~$292K in the bank.
Your next game also costs $10M.
You’ve got 2.9% of that.

9. You made a hit — and can’t afford to go again.
This is the trap:
Success doesn’t equal freedom.
Not when platforms, discounts, recoup, revenue splits, and taxes eat everything.

10. Want to self-fund your next game?
Then your current game has to:
• Sell more
• Stay at full price
• Or be self-published
Anything else = the cycle continues.

11. TL;DR:
2 million copies sold
$20 million earned
$292,500 in your pocket
Dev life is way less glamorous than it looks.

Stay sharp. Stay indie (if you can).

Publisher takes first $12M to recoup dev + marketing.

Your deal is 70/30 — in the publisher’s favor.

Marx was right about everything

Publisher takes first $12M to recoup dev + marketing. You haven’t made a cent yet.

So, he paid his employees, right? So he's complaining that he only personally made $292,500? Or is it the company, and he still needs to pay his employees? Isn't this guy the business owner why would he be taxing himself twice?

~$292K in the bank.

That doesn't sound too bad, I'm not a burger but that's like 3 years of well paid work, isn't it?

9. You made a hit — and can’t afford to go again.

Well, you could live in the middle of nowhere and try indie, stretch that money and become a dev fulltime.
Or just talk to the publisher, they had success with your game, maybe you can negotiate again?

why would any game cost 10 million dollars to make? is he retarded?

100% he just kept it as a sole entrepreneurship lmfao

When you don't live in a place constructed entirely out of human faeces like you do, things actually cost money.

Do you need publishers to sell a game on steam even if its just a 1 man game with no investors?

It’s always been this way in the industry, and it’s really not his fault either. That said, the people coming in game dev can’t expect to get rich of game devving alone. You need to merchandise your characters. Unless you like making predatory mobile slop, where chances of succeeding are even less but more lucrative.

That doesn't sound too bad, I'm not a burger but that's like 3 years of well paid work, isn't it?

Senior position earns that in a year plus benefits

why would any game cost 10 million dollars to make? is he retarded?

what is wages

No anon, he’s not. You are.

Please Anon Babble buy No Rest for the Wicked. My- I mean, Thomas Mahler's game, his life, quite literally depends on it.

bro didn't put his hand into merchandising that's where the REAL money is made
also

Your next game also costs $10M.

umm no it doesn't???

So you think Ori was made by 1 person?

No, I'm talking about it in general

umm no it doesn't???

Because things have just gotten cheaper and cheaper, right? You already made a game, people will come work for free for the next one.

Do you need publishers to sell a game on steam even if its just a 1 man game with no investors?

You need publishers for product awareness because there are thousands of games being released everyday on steam and mobile. It’s less than of a 1% chance you can make it without one. But hey, go ahead and self publish your slop, see if that works for you. You can, but it isn’t a smart idea

Then no? Are you retarded or just 10 years old?

I don't know how steam or the game industry works, I just play the games.

state generously subcontracts you to develop a game

below minimum wage of other developed countries

refusal is not allowed

game bombs; you get jailed for wasting public resources

game succeeds; you get no credit because it was the states' project

you see no revenue because it was subcontract

go home

sudden urge to fall out of a window

at last i am truly enlightened by the ways of marxism

Your game cost $10M to make. A publisher funded it.

So Microsoft gave him $10M early to make the game and paid for his employees and he's pissed he only takes home 300K? Did he expect to be like Notch and retire off 1 game?

This is why you do what the Publisher does: release 2 games and make one a flop. The second game should cost twice as much as your successful game. Then you don't pay any taxes.

he went too hard on the graphic fluff stuff
a lot of it was not needed and it certainly cost at least 1 or 2 full time employees

incel tries to make a game

it fails miserably

Really makes you think

you could poop out a low effort indie game for jack shit and a couple peanuts and punt that shit on steam easily.

$300k is a ton of money. That's like 10 years of retirement money in most states.

That's about 3 years salary for senior management in most companies. Out of that you'd pay ~$175k in taxes. So it's really 6 years income.

the first game blind forest, not only is the prettiest one, its far cheaper. unless the co director was lying it definitely did cost anywhere near 10 millions to make
this is true for every subsequent game. Ori 2 is blatantly downgraded by the graphics autism, you can feel the lack of focus on some of the gameplay mechanics and the cut content, while it has more spots that stick out like a sore thumb, compared to the first game with richer backgrounds.
And then theres his third unfinished ass game, that is being literally raped by its tech while the gameplay doesnt progress behind shallow rollslop with shallow rpg on top. The world and story is fantastic, but its not within a game that uses it well, the random undeliberate loot sucks and kills much of the purpose of the neat areas and DS1-tier world design

years ago he criticized other developers for falling into the trap of putting too much into graphics rather than making the game beautiful in a way that isnt necessarily very expensive. did he fall into his own trap, or was he just carried by his previous employees that predominantly left him after every successful game release?

So Microsoft gave him $10M early to make the game and paid for his employees and he's pissed he only takes home 300K? Did he expect to be like Notch and retire off 1 game?

I don’t understand the context if he’s personally taking home 300K or if the company he owns is. If it’s the latter, it’s unsustainable considering he wants to make a future game with an equal of a budget if not higher. If it’s the former then yeah I guess

t. Fp&a expert

unless the co director was lying it definitely did cost anywhere near 10 millions to make

it definitely did not cost anywhere near 10 millions to make***

of course not, you dont need a publisher for anything. its a matter of the publisher doing what you cant do, such as paying the upfront costs of marketing or maybe translation and qa, or just the development budget of the game, and in exchange they get money out of you down the line
ultimately it depends on who you choose. there are dogshit publishers that take away a fuckton (see: microsoft) and theres better publishers that can offer you a better deal, maybe help you out while still keeping you doing most of the investment and keeping most of the sales, etc. you need to see your options

Mogs this grifter.

I'm saying this for ages but nobody ever beloved it

The other side of this is that if M$ is keeping all the money and profit - its fair to say they likely foot the bill to make the game as well.

So yeah, Mr Mahler here didn't make millions but he presumably didn't risk his own money here and made out with 300k as a reward for his success? Or am I getting something wrong here.

I get the frustration ("fuck, I should have got a loan or something and risked it, I'd be a millionaire!") but he still didn't do bad out of this as I'm reading it.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. You would take advantage of financial help from a rich parent wouldn’t you?

How did we jump from 20 million earned to 2 million?

Whats the story here?

Gommunish

Starve

he made out with way more than 300k
for starters the ori games collectively sold 10 million copies
for seconds, reading this message from the other co director makes it sound like Blind Forest cost way, way less than 10 million

E33's director's dad has a pretty big finance company. They are a pretty rich family.

20 Million
Steam takes 30% so he has 14 million left
Microsoft paid for his development costs and marketing so they took 12 out of the 2 million. Then MS took 1.4M of the profit cause of their deal and then Government took 50% of his 600K and Mahler takes 300K home.

I wasn't a fan of ori 2.
1 is one of my favorite games

Whats the story here?

His father is uber rich. Some French schizo on leddit managed to find who he’s related to and where the money is coming from (his dad’s companies) and ended up deleting the mind map and chart of the whole ordeal because libel laws in France are as ridiculous in Japan. Said proof leaked onto here and we all now know he’s funded the game with his dad’s money.

it definitely did not cost anywhere near 10 millions to make***

Ori did cost 10 millions and the sequel even more.
Most likely you undervalue the game because people associated Ori with cheap indie games like hollow knight and rain world. But the reality is that Ori games where possible just because Ori being a Microsoft IP allowed Microsoft to gave financial support to the studios. Ori isn't actually an indie game.

I assume he was also paying himself a salary during development, out of that initial $10M investment.

You don't have to spend ten million dollars to make a sequel.

This could’ve been avoided if they learned marketing and made their own engine. Publishing is a business not a charity. You reap what you sow, it’s that shrimple

Your game cost $10M to make.

They also spent $2M on marketing.

You price the game at $20.

Your deal is 70/30 — in the publisher’s favor

Not exactly surprising. You dig yourself a hole that big and price it at $10-20, it’s probably not going to end well

You don't have to spend ten million dollars to make a sequel.

You do realize people have jobs and said jobs need market rate wages? Do you not understand the concept of market economics?

50% tax

what shithole country does he live in?

E33 guy is a nepobaby who instead of just spending his parents money on being an expensive nigger, actually used it to make something lots of people would enjoy.

He exists as an argument against inheritance taxes basically, while his peers are an argument for eating the rich.

Austria

based as fuck
i enjoy 2, but ori 1 just feels like a much more well executed and deliberate game

1 doesnt have elements that feel lacking, very unbalanced, sometimes struggling to justify themselves or outright shabby. In ori 2 you have the game making you ridiculously tanky even in Hardmode provided you grab some life cells and the difficulty curve waters down the game itself, you have the comically unbalanced shards with bland shit like "5% more damage output via rng crit", you have the wellspring glades being a little lacking/uninteresting where you arent invested in it, you can feel the cut content around the edges, lets you use all abilities at once compared to the second game that typically gives you less equipped actions despite your bigger arsenal of moves, stuff like that.

Ori 1 takes its escape sequences to its maximum. Ori 2 starts really good with the proper combat, but ends up massively underusing the potential of ori's moveset with very slow anemic bossfights, weak enemy design overall, the braindead healing mechanic that trivialized everything, stuff of the of the sort. Meanwhile 2's escape sequences are overall weaker, except for one which was poorly tested and overtuned on release, and then immediatelly nerfed into the ground so hard as kneejerk reaction to reviews that it became way too trivial

Ori 1 makes pretty much every background pretty in an often more nuanced and detailed way. Ori 2 goes all into the superficial pretty colorful graphix side of it, which arguably is part of why 1 is beautiful, but it not only has so many more less detailed and shallow backgrounds, areas where the prettyness is concentrated into "dedicated fancy background rooms", etc, it also has a fuckton of places where its visuals is completely raped by the horrendous DoF that was retroactively added in. I dont know why they did it, maybe it was performance, maybe theyre retarded and think it looks better

You dig yourself a hole that big and price it at $10-20, it’s probably not going to end well

Every nerd on the internet from this hell hole to reddit to X advocates the idea for cheap games. Even literalwho youtubers who claim to be game devs with no experience. Can you really blame them for pricing it this way?

but he has free healthcare tho :)

Moon studios didn't spent a dime in marketing, it was Microsoft and Xbox that did that plus the development. The studios only hired people and developed the games.

last but not least Ori 1 just has bolder mechanics. The soul links, more ballsy lasers/hazards/instakills, high damage hazards in areas like sorrow pass, letting you chain dashes and combo light bursts indefinitely. It didnt even have fast travel at first so its interconnection was mandatory
Oh hey, the retarded orifag is here. Glad to see youre as recognizable as ever
Theres even someone bitching about you in a recent thread

He made a profit, how is that a flop? You are thinking of asscreed which only had 1.2 m in sales and costed 400 m to produce. Now that is a flop.

Theres even someone bitching about you in a recent thread

You always bitch about "me" for saying true information while faggots like you only make misinformation and destroyed the game image and reputation and you keep doing it in this very thread and in that post.

I can see getting in that situation, but yes, I blame them for expecting more than 2M sales, or not taking a few minutes to do the math

He made only 300K. He decided to go independent with his new game, which cost him 10 million. Now, he's down 9.7 million :)

10. Want to self-fund your next game?

Then your current game has to:

• Sell more

• Stay at full price

• Or be self-published

Anything else = the cycle continues.

The implication here is that they fucked up and should’ve sold at a higher price or self published to break even. Rule of thumb in game development is to make back internal costs as revenue to break even (10M). He got less than 300K for the company/himself as owner.

im sure that you sperging in a way so ugly that makes the game look worse by association is helping you improve its image

Guy is just a retard, theres tons of indie devs making a hit and able to keep making a good sequel without going broke.
He's spouting this shit like it's some kind of fatality and he's a victim of the system, when in fact he should just keep to game directing and hire an accountant and project manager to budget his games.

being a gamedev must be the most cucked job ever, only 0.1% make it

i read somewhere that 95% games on Steam dont even earn back what they invested in the game

I can see getting in that situation, but yes, I blame them for expecting more than 2M sales, or not taking a few minutes to do the math

The price probably (50/50) came from Microsoft and not them. Pricing economics are also dictated by marketing and MS published it

I want to make video games for a living

But he was playing with house money. MS gave him $10M to do with whatever he wanted, but if they make the money back, MS wants their money back plus 70/30 of the profit. I assume he also paid himself a regular Salary during the dev costs as CEO and took that 300K as a bonus

95% of games on steam are total garbage. Asset flips or AI slop.

Not wrong though, there is just too much to ever pay attention too, never mind play or pay for.

There's nothing to improve. Faggots like you made everything in your power to undervalue and destroy the game reputation.
Every service that was made towards Ori games and the studios was aimed at disservice and irrelevancy. The main reason these games failed is their audience fault.

read somewhere that 95% games on Steam dont even earn back what they invested in the game

That’s true because everyone and their pet dogs publish games. It’s as bad as mobile, there’s too many games. And you have console publishers allowing literal shit (some self published kuso shmup/flight game made in the bezel engine)for the switch and actual indies unable to publish their game themselves

We need to go back to boxed PC games again to avoid this shit

you don't make money from the game itself
you make money from merchandising

make yet another fucking Metroidvania

go bankrupt

I wish this happened more often.

That's true for indie games. Ori was not an indie game. The main source of income Ori should have made is selling Xbox console and gamepass subscriptions for Microsoft.

what the fuck are you talking about? only the big IPs sell merch

But he was playing with house money. MS gave him $10M to do with whatever he wanted, but if they make the money back, MS wants their money back plus 70/30 of the profit. I assume he also paid himself a regular Salary during the dev costs as CEO and took that 300K as a bonus

I’m not blaming Microsoft, all I’m telling you is that the standard is to make back what you put in; even if the money wasn’t coming out of your pocket. The rule of thumb was he should’ve gotten back 10M and he didn’t. The implication here is that they’re stuck at a point where they’d have to find a publisher again and do this entire song and dance to gain a profit. A profit big enough to allow self publishing. And there’s no chance in hell he will be throwing his 300K income on another project and take nothing home. He effectively placed himself and his company in the coal mines to work for another publisher. That’s the problem here and for many indie dev teams and companies.

There was a thread earlier yesterday or today, whose name I forgot, about a dev team having low morale and about to be fired by EA. This team left EA, made their own company, and had to go back to contract work because they couldn’t make it on their own.

So.. just go back to indie?

plenty of popular indie games sell merch

you don't make money from the game itself, you make money from merchandising

Hi, I’m a marketer. There’s probably a clause in their contract that says Ori is Microsoft property so if they even made merchandise, it’ll go to Microsoft and not the team that made Ori. Unless they have a split ip ownership which by the sounds of it, they don’t

blind forest

Go woke go broke

like?

Which is stupid on the dev's part if that's the case.

Gamepass is bad for developers? Stop the fucking presses

take a shit deal

lol
LMAO

They did. After Ori they left Microsoft and made their own indie game which is too big for them and it's probably going to make the company go bankrupt.

Yes, Ori belong to Microsoft and Microsoft doesn't really care to make some dime from selling plushies from a game that sold average and most people don't even know it's a Microsoft product anyway.

Which is stupid on the dev's part if that's the case.

You have very little wiggle room as a developer when going to a publisher. Everyone’s going to play hardball with you because you need them, not the other way around. It’s very rare when publishers approach devs for a deal, it almost never happens. Most will tell you that you’re not worth your time and others will tell you to fuck off and get a loan.

If I were to make a game:
1. Try to keep the team as small as possible. Solo dev if you can. No permanent employees, only hire temp contractors who don't get a cut of the final product.
2. Don't spend any money on marketing. Post gifs on social media to gauge interest. Don't invest in any game that doesn't organically, effortlessly get buzz.
3. Self-publish. Publishers are just leaches that suck the blood from games that would already make it on their own. If publishers are reaching out to you, that's a great sign that your game will make it, but don't let them steal your money from you.
It's all a gamble anyhow, but at least this way, you'd keep all the earnings to yourself (minus the inevitable Steam cut and taxes).

There has to be info he is not diving into but this reeks of mad cuz bad or living in a shithole country with high tax rates.

Lot of armchair retards in this thread, the dev is right.
The point is that publisher deals can be brutal and you're better off not taking them. If you are taking one you're jumping the gun and you're actually not big enough or ready to make a game of that scope.

$300k for a wildly successful game is crazy low, he's saying its not enough money to self publish a sequel because it's only enough to support him and maybe 1 other person for 3 years. And 3 years is Lowball a lot of your favourite Indies took ~6+

So you get trapped, you take the publisher deal again cause it's the only way to use the success of the last game and you get stuffed again. But If you never take the publisher deal you've gotta do all that work yourself and find the money to pay everyone, or solo dev everything.

Add onto that most Indies never sell 10 copies and you've got a shit situation all round.

Proofs?

The USSR actually made a ton of shitty movies and none of the directors got gulag'd for it as far as I know. I've watched a few. They also made a bunch of good movies and the directors' names are still known; I've also watched those.

Look at fangamer if you want to see an example of a good list. There are tons of indie games selling merch through companies like this (I know there are AAA studios listed here too but there are way more indie games under the And More! link).

I am really enjoying No Rest so this fucker better shut his mouth and stop driving people away from the game, at least before it gets finished.

Microsoft doesn't really care to make some dime from selling plushies

I’m going to stop you right there, because they already raped B&K and Conker’s corpses with merch before. If it’ll make money back for the Actiblizzard deal, they would. Just don’t give them that idea to do so, lol

I have more than that and I've never worked an honest day in my life.

take shit deal

How can this happen???

Lol. Lmao.

and you're better off not taking them

Not everyone is a nepobaby who can ask dad for millions to make a game for. Normal people don't just have 10 million in the bank to finance your game project with.

From their Wikipedia page.

This nigger took a shit deal and I'm suppose to feel bad for him?

do you really think that people buy this crap?

Read nigga, if you need 10m for your game, your game is too big.
There's no situation where you should take a publisher deal.

There has to be info he is not diving into but this reeks of mad cuz bad or living in a shithole country with high tax rates.

No he’s pretty much right. Being in Austria isn’t as bad as you think because even burgerland taxes the shit out of you in different ways (sales tax, state tax, etc)

Lot of armchair retards in this thread, the dev is right

Anon, most posts are agreeing with the dev. Who are the retards are you referring to?

And how are you gonna pay your employees? Niggas ain't gonna work for free.

That doesn't support your claim

Next time don't live in some meme dystopia taxing half of your work's earnings

The point is that publisher deals can be brutal and you're better off not taking them.

This is the big takeaway. If your game looks good enough to get a publisher deal, it likely looks good enough to sell itself. If you can fund your development any other way than a publisher, you should.

I see. All games should just be made by neckbeards in their freetime for free.

Employees? You shouldn't have employees till you have enough War chest from previous successful titles to pay them.

yes, else people wouldn't make merch in the first place
people love plushies of their favorite characters

Read nigga, if you need 10m for your game, your game is too big.

The game’s budget is very modest anon.

There's no situation where you should take a publisher deal.

He has professionals working for him, do you expect them to work for peanuts?

this is why I tell the gamedev thread to not bother making games
it's a road to poverty

nigga do the math, if you have a dev team of 10 people )thats the bare minimum btw) you gotta pay them 60k per year and now do the math for a game that takes 3-4 years to make

10m is not modest

fire them

YOu must remember that video games are not a vital necessity to live your life.
You cannot survive off buying that game. It is a time waster for children of rich people. The fact that so many of us have fallen into the trap of staying in the hobby past childhood has hurt us beyond repair.

Nobody is making merch of a game before their game even releases

So you think people should just spend 10 years making a game on their own while working their normal job. And then when they sell a gorrilian copies, as all tiny indie games does, they can make a bigger game?

Just how fucking retarded are you?

This is why you sell shovels, not look for gold

you can make a living making vidya. Sell your soul to Ubisoft and just act like a coding mercenary.

all the McWagie retards saying 300k is a lot of money

You fucking idiots, 300k will pay for 3-4 programmers for a year, let alone a full dev team for multiple years to make a game.

just don't hire SanFran engineers that want 100k starting

That's not how it works. What an employee is paid is a lot less than what the company paid for the employee.

because they already raped B&K and Conker’s corpses with merch before.

That was the times when Microsoft still tried. Now Microsoft is heading toward secure practices and even with that it's not working and most likely Xbox will cease to exist in the coming years as well.
Microsoft do not care about an IP like Ori which is miles less relevant than konker and it's barely associated as being a Microsoft product.

No, they should do all that then make same-sized games scopelet.

how much would it take to employ 10 people full time for 2 years to make a game using an engine?

So make Steam or Unreal Engine? In this case selling the shovel is much harder than finding the gold.

So the only games that should exist at all is tiny 1 man indie games. You are beyond retarded.

Yes and it sucks.
You think people should live off publisher teet and never make enough to break out on their own?
You think indie devs should be under the boot of the Jews forever?

Don't start your own business just work for someone else forever!

early access Soulslike/ARPG

no, lol POE2 was already way too full of itself launching in the state it is in, ARPG's require more to be launched as a product.

Early Access as a whole has a been a huge fucking blight to the industry, its caused them to spend insane amounts upfront.

Microsoft has already covered his development costs. It's part of the 12 million they deducted from his 14 million.

Another day, another Thomas Mahler attention whoring clown show
Still can't believe this faggot had the gall to try to guilt-trip his discord into positive review bombing his game by saying the studio might close down, then when a journalist reported on it, he tried obfuscating it with culture war shit

just work for someone else forever

Which is exactly what someone doing what you suggest will be doing.

most likely Xbox will cease to exist in the coming years as well.

Microsoft do not care about an IP like Ori which is miles less relevant than konker and it's barely associated as being a Microsoft product.

Do you genuinely think they wouldn’t try capitalizing on Ori merch? They don’t because they don’t know any better and have no ideas. Again I have to remind you the internal emails that got leaked of Nadella telling Xbox they have to make back this money somehow. They’re 70B dollars in the hole

10M is absolutely modest for a title like that considering they have professionals working for them. Do you think they’re going to hire Indians for peanuts and risk the blowback of a shitty product? No pun intended of course

More than it would cost to not do that retard

you don't need a 10 million dollar budget

yeah huh, how else am I going to pay for my 10 million dollars of expenditures

easy, don't spend 10 million dollars
I should be a consultant.

he's the exception, not the rule.

the Autuer's of the industry are great, but the INdustry is so big, it has no need of them, and actually hates them.

you can't factory assemble recreate immeasurable talent and artistic skill, so its functionally worthless to the Mega-corp industry that is Western videogames.

Autuer's are great for us, the player, and for the studio they work with, for the big business, they hate special anamolies.

Don't have professionals working for you then
wow so difficult

That'll be 10 million dollars plus tip

Don't have professionals working for you then

wow so difficult

Then how would’ve this game been made then anon?

So, what games do you make, anon? Stick figures? A Ren'Py slideshow? You can easily spend over a million a year developing a game for four years. nobody is doing this shit for free like they're reddit mods. They could be working at other tech companies that pay more.

who gives a fuck, its an outstanding game, we all knew he worked at Ubisoft and obviously had money to fleece talent and starpower.

he never claimed Indie status, simply small company status, which is true.

you get $600K

they keep 1,4 Millions

LMAO, shoudln't have took a slave contract in the first place

but you have to if you want-

floped and give all the money to slave owner

Do you genuinely think they wouldn’t try capitalizing on Ori merch?

I mean, if the game actually got really really popular Microsoft would have surely done that. Them Microsoft would have invested more into the IP with more games and merch. But this should have been happened in 2015. Now it's just too late.

Well, he wasn't risking $10 million; Microsoft was. It's understandable that MS would want their money back plus profit if they're investing millions in an indie game.

Your deal is 70/30 — in the publisher’s favor.

So what value does the so-called 'publisher' add in order to be entitled to 70% of the earnings?

I dunno how you think any business gets started anon, anyone in software has to make it in their spare time

Ill be generous and only take 9.95 million so he has a proper budget left.

By the developer.

I can easily light money on fire in one minute, doesn't make it a good idea

Your game cost $10M to make.

A publisher funded it. They also spent $2M on marketing.

So you owe them $12M before you see a dime.

Unless you can pull 10 Million out of your back pocket anon. That's who investments work. They want to make money not lose money

he won't, people who start manic spiraling never catch themselves, their ego and narcissism just can't be contained, least of all by themselves.

he NEEDS for his outbursts to ruin his life, its his ultimate endgoal, its simply that he doesnt' know that consciously.

meanwhile Vampire Survivors Dev is rolling in millions of dollars.

We need to go back. We need independent boxed software again. Leaving this started this whole mess. Same with movies, just look up the Matt Damon interview on dvds sales being a godsend for movie studios

The deal is basically

well give you money up front to pay everyone in exchange for a share of the profits

then we're both aligned in making the game a success so well market it and pay for translations and platform deals and whatever else.

They are jew and will pay for the 6 trillions $ marketing taxe instead of you

Use AI to make stuff for cheap

NOOOO, THAT'S BAD. PAY FOR STAFF

I can't afford staff

NOOOO, GET A PUBLISHER THEN

I got a publisher and they've ripped me off

LOL should have just used AI then

why does his next game cost 10 millions? is he retarded?

Just fund the game yourself, bro

Forgot the pic

the lottery isn't a scam!

there was a guy in the news that won!

Yes he is
store.steampowered.com/app/1371980/No_Rest_for_the_Wicked/

Funding the whole thing sometimes, which sounds like it's the case here. Because there's no way you make a game by yourself and devolver gets 70% just for marketing.

They want to make money not lose money

Snoy sister, i don't feel so good about those 12 battle royal fps trend chasing we are doing at half a billions $ each...

make a trash meme game

"why am I broke"?

Same with movies, just look up the Matt Damon interview on dvds sales being a godsend for movie studios

Yeah studios really fucked themselves in the long run by killing the home video market to chase streaming slop revenue.

They gave you 12 million bucks with no guarantee that they would even break even, so that 70% would be of 0 dollars if the game was less successful and the dev would instead be complaining on twitter that he received no support from the publisher, that they didn't do enough for his game.
Don't want them to have a cut, don't ask them for money.

publisher takes 100% of the risk

publisher gets most of the profit

Start a fucking business and you'll understand how fucked your way of thinking is

How is that solving anything? Youre giving big box stored 30% instead of steam

Because it's the studios philosophy

Nooooo you don't understand, I NEED to spend money I don't have! It's literally impossible not to spend millions of dollars!!!!!

Is he inflating the amount of content the game has when he talks about it? He mentioned things like hundreds of hours once they get to 1.0 as a brag but to me that sounds genuinely terrible. The game looks great but I'm not gonna buy a game that is hundreds of hours long. No game in the world could possibly have good enough pacing to justify that, it sounds awful.

he made a game by himself that people wanted.

the Retard in OP wants to make a giant ass unfinished game likely with hundreds of people in his studio, and is blowing through cash and having a meltdown because of it.

EVERYONE knows the concept of living within your means, and this also applies to your business, too many companies are blowing hundreds of millions of dollars on dogshit.

it isn't a lottery, its "don't make a game you wouldn't call great and blow 300 million dollars on doing it" and everyone is trying to do this fucking thing.

you dont need 10 millions to create games that people truly care about.

The only way to make real money as an indie dev is to make low effort meme trash like that digging a hole game and hope that it happens to blow up with streamers. That's the sad truth of the matter.

the moment this was launching 10% complete as an Early Access, he was fucked.

EVERYONE knows the concept of living within your means

I wish dude, mortgage and car shit has trained people to unironically think

So he's a dumbass
70/30 till pay back pub is normal, not 100/0
The 30% is eaten by publisher normally, not the dev
And your taxes should be 0 for the first few years, as you carry over the dev and prototyping costs as lossess

So he should have ~4mill to work with, which easily gets you the funding for the next game

Dev life is way less glamorous than it looks.

So is being eternally jobless. I bet his life is still way better than mine.

10 million really doesn't go as far as it sounds. Not if you live in America or Europe where you actually are forced to pay people. Wanna go even crazier? Add some benefits into the mix.

You're wrong. They got back more than $10 million. They got back $20 million. Their business partner got back what they put in, $10 million + $2m in marketing, and they got a decent 7% profit on their investment.

10 million dev cost

Implies the publisher was paying their entire studio's salary during development. Why would he complain about that? they were the ones keeping the lights on.

Would have been great if people cared about actually good 10 killions games instead of glorified shovelware garbage we have today.

Shut up you fucking retard, you have literally no idea what you're talking about. Publishers have never been less relevant, their advances have never been smaller and their reach has never been shorter, a huge number of successful games were self published. They can't (and won't) do anything more to push a game than a person can do themselves, the only function they serve is paying for development and the developer taking that bargain knowing he'll make less money from a hit, if you can fund it yourself there is literally zero reason to get a publisher.

He's saying he didn't make enough money to become Microsoft and be his own publishing partner to put down $10 million + $2 million in marketing on his next game from his first game.

enough to pay 10 good devs for 10 years. you dont need the bloat, you need the talent and run a tight ship.

Like I said fire them. Problem solved.

He forgot to mention dev time but that sounds like a cushy job for X number of months working on his dream game with a salary plus a 300k bonus for completing the game.
Is that bad?

he's bipolar and manic depressive, and it shows.

dude fucked up with his new game being, well completely fucking nothing Early Access for likely 3-4 years and so no one gives a shit, and now he's in the downturn, freaking out everywhere he can.

no one likes a loser, a whiner, and he's a big one now that the chips are down.

Those 10 people became more than 80 people in those 10 years tho.

I swear, online tankies are more annoying than Randroids and vegans

Larisa Shepitko, and her team.
In soviet russia if you are well known enough you do not disappear.
You die in an "accident"
Like a freak car crash that kills everyone of your crew in Leningrad.
She was obviously inconvenient to the Soviets for her pursuit of truth and battles against censorship.
Even now its not looked at properly, but it is ridiculously easy to read between the lines.

Others were punished.
Sergei Paradjanov was sent to the gulag for a while as well, for "surrealist tendencies" among other things.

Sounds like something that could have been prevented by not going into several hundred times his net worth in debt

Good for him. Doesn't diminish his success in any way.

If you are taking one you're jumping the gun and you're actually not big enough or ready to make a game of that scope.

That's the whole point, isn't it. Who is spending $10 million on the development of a game with nothing in the bank?

And then we wonder why no one else wants to make normal games and instead sleep and see their gacha in which every month they sell 3D models for millions of dollars.

why is no one talking about the quote that the game cost "$10M to make"??
Games do not cost 10 million dollars to make.

How is that solving anything? Youre giving big box stored 30% instead of steam

There’s wiggle room for negotiating that much lower, sometimes down to near 0 because big box retailers need inventory variety to push foot traffic. There’s little to no wiggle room for steam, Sony, Nintendo, etc unless you are the hottest shit on the block. Considering how much big box is struggling in general, they’d probably be happy a low percentage and throw in a blow job too.

If your game flops and makes $2M instead, you owe the publisher nothing, and they have to eat a $10M loss. That's why they get to take most of the profit.
If one wants otherwise, there are publishers that will work with a self funded dev while just handling the business side of things. They'll take far less of the profit as a result, but requires the dev to actually put their own assets on the line.

yea well Ego, Pride before the fall.

just looking at No Rest for the Wicket you can tell the sheer amount of animations going on took alot, and cost alot, and its tied to.. well nothing really, its a complete bizarre combo of Souls+topdown+ARPG.

in a way that is at least fun to explore but ultimately, nothing much, it needs 3 or 4 years, and it'll never get it, because he's Broke yesterday.

Publishers have never been less relevant, their advances have never been smaller and their reach has never been shorter, a huge number of successful games were self published.

Triggered indie baby spotted. Stay mad at the life circumstances we are in. Not me for stating the truth

the level of delusion in this thread

youtube.com/watch?v=balitii8_Xg

So make Steam or Unreal Engine? In this case selling the shovel is much harder than finding the gold.

If you have any notable skills, offer them to game companies at a premium plus retainer fees. I’m not implying you need to be Steam

This should be the ultimate advice for all indie devs out there. No ifs or buts. It's the ideal to reach when making a game.

So the guy who made a couple somehow popular 2D platformers thought it would be a good idea to get into debt to make a isometric dark souls and now is crying because he can already tell he fucked up?

The studios managed to grow because even if Ori didn't sold that much, Microsoft covering the development cost still allowed the studios to grow and be able to produce something on their own. They just want all in because they had the confidence that people would care about them since they made freaking Ori, but the reality is that people only cares about Ori and the studious on a very surface level.

Earning 300k as a pure bonus is like 1% of top earners tier. That after working for years at a fulfilling cushion job with a great salary with zero risk to himself. Getting a publisher deal like that was already winning the lottery.

Whining about that is fucking unreal.

Based non-retard. Finance jews have mindbroken common sense out of people.

he's whining because its all gone, and all the money he borrowed to make this new pile of.. w/e is also gone.

Yeah, now if he has to be a cuck to publishers again to make his next game and the game after that and the game after that. It's unfair to the artists.

1. Your game cost $10M to make.

Damn this dude failed at step fucking 1

A publisher funded it.

FAILED TWICE BEFORE MAKING IT TO STEP 2

They also spent $2M on marketing.

THREE TIMES

At $10 mil steam cut goes down to 25%. If he made it to $50 mil it would go down to 20%. Why wasn't that 25% included in the calculations? You might say "only 5%?" but 5% of millions is still a lot of money. Seems like there's some trickery going on here to make this seem a lot more dire than it is.
But it does not cost 10 mil to make Ori. I refuse to believe that. They took the wrong path in trying to get this out to people. The marketing budget makes sense, but 10 mil to fund development is the most retarded shit ever.

Retard

do you retards actually think the only way to get a sequel is to be a financial success
some developers are dumb enough to double down you know

Games do not cost 10 million dollars to make.

he doesn’t know

No one tell him

Let me appeal to le chuds to try to hide my scummy behavior, gamers rise the heck up!!!

This sleazy faggot is a scumbag and I'm glad he's clearly kvetching in panic. I just feel bad for the talented people working under him that will have to find a new job soon.

Oh the horror, he has to work a comfy office job for the salary of a top lawyer.

He doesn't though, could have self published ori 3 with the same engine and assets for $20 and made bank but he decided to keep climbing the debt pyramid

surely begging for money will get no rest for the wicked more sales and players

they mean Ori 1 didn't, and it absolutely didn't

it probably cost 2-3 million.

they really got high on that success and ballooned the company out of control.

Ori got a sequel just because the dev team wanted to give more time in the oven for their next game, so they just stayed with Microsoft a bit more and made the sequel while still working on their next game. But initially there wasn't even a plan for Ori 2, they just wanted to abandon the gmae at the first iteration.

he can't afford to good accountants
bet he's in California, didn't incorporate in Delaware

Is this why Tim “Epic” Sweeney is trying to abolish cuts taken by platforms? By creating third party stores? If so, based.

He's EU.

Meanwhile

Hypercharge releases

People laugh that it's selling moderately

Dev doesn't really care as it was low budget so they'll be fine

People are now angry he's not in debt

could have self published ori 3

he doesnt own ori

QRD?

the absolute audacity to post this when several Boeing whistleblowers mysteriously committed suicide in the past several years and the government's case against them has been inconspicuously settled with no fanfare

wanting to be an game dev

not an accountant to nickel and dime these game devs as your clients

Shiggy diggity doo

Then make a game about his legally distinct brother bori, god I really am going to have to charge a consulting fee for answering dumb retards. 10 million per just borrow it

I'm not a burger but that's like 3 years of well paid work, isn't it?

Factor in income tax and depending on the state that could be 5 years while at a decent job

I only make 10 times the amount of the average retail/warehouse/factory wagie what the FUCK

and yet he made am2r with no money, curious!

Leaving this started this whole mess

Before Steam having a publisher bankroll your game was literally the only option, leaving ended this mess because now anyone can publish a game
This guy has no ground to stand on, he took a massive loan from a publisher, so he doesn't make any profit, that's on him

Ori sold poorly while having millions in funding and advertising from Microsoft and didn't become impactful and profitable.

What makes you think that doing the same while being on your own will make a difference? It's literal suicide at this point.

Noooooooooo you don't get it, I had a success so I HAVE to bloat my expenses 10x

He got review bombed by Twitter trannies. So he went on discord and told his discord trannies to brigade his review score

All that marketing is baked in, all he has to do is say "from the maker of ori and the luminescent dildo" and it transfers over.

They're literally doing it now with their new game and still nobody gives a shit about them anyway.

Before Steam having a publisher bankroll your game was literally the only option, leaving ended this mess because now anyone can publish a game

There were plenty of developers who self published boxed pc games once they found out the supplier for said box and manuals + a distributor which was usually any one that distributed electronics. It was very simple back then and those who couldn’t got a publisher (or wanted more like a tv advert). We need physical media back, almost every entrepreneur knows how to source custom designed boxes and manuals these days.

There were plenty of developers who self published boxed pc games

It was very simple back then

As someone who worked in the game industry before Steam, you are fucking delusional

Not true they are just spending too much. Ori did not sell poorly either they just spent too much making it. There are two variables in the profitability equasion not one.

Jonathan Blow's name has far bigger marketability and the Braid remake failed and his next game could easily fail as well.

translation: you are a butthurt nafo shill
got it

LimitedRunGames will burn your game onto a fucking store-bought DVD-R for you these days.

As someone who worked in the game industry before Steam, you are fucking delusional

Saying we need physical media back is delusional? No. Saying we need developers to go back to physical media? Sure it is delusional, everyone wants to publish on Steam. But when OP complains about a cut and a publisher, he has no one to blame but himself.

He literally didn't. The negative reviews were all by people that cared about the game and thought his gameplay design and his gameplay changes suck. You can go look at the review timeline. He's full of shit.

Then, he went "GUYS, IF YOU DON'T REVIEW MY GAME POSITIVELY, WE MIGHT SHUT DOWN" and when someone reported on it, THEN he tried deflecting to culture war garbage.

This was his discord message. Tell me with a straight face that someone going "The dev team might be in trouble" merited this response:

This thread just confirms how little Anon Babble knows about the games industry. You people are actually fucking delusional

Braid sucks

Saying that things were better for game developers before Steam is fucking delusional

LimitedRunGames will burn your game onto a fucking store-bought DVD-R for you these days.

That’s what triggers me. Not only this isn’t the way it was done, they’re taking the easy way out and charging a premium because “lol physical is expensive.” On what fucking world? I despise their grift and luckily people picked up on how over expensive their shit is

blow is just a lolcow. there is no marketability

Yeah publishers are a complete fucking scam and I don't know why people keep using them. It's not 2006 anymore, nobody is even going to buy your indie game on disc and getting into online storefronts isn't that hard!

Poor fucker. Didn't like the game, but you know, it wasn't bad, he didn't deserve to fail like this, had infinitely more heart than 99% of indies.

So does Ori.
Far more than Ori and the blind retard.

This thread just confirms how little Anon Babble knows about the games industry. You people are actually fucking delusional

I don't know why people keep using them

Because they give you money

Fuck off. Everyone knows you can make a game for free, don't market it and it will simply become a viral hit overnight. EZ

Lmfao this guy is an actual retard. Feel bad for the people that bought early access cause they just got grifted.

Spending infinite amounts of other people's money is not a good way to do anything, videogames or otherwise.

Ori did not sell poorly either they just spent too much making it.

They really didn't. They spent just 3 to 4 year on each game which is standard development length for the amount of videogame production value and studios size. Also Ori sold poorly in terms of big corporate standard. The whole franchise barley sold 10 millions copies in 10 years,not counting that the price for those games was already pretty low for the production.

seems like massive mismanagement of funds

also isn't he/his company currently begging users to leave good reviews for no rest for the wicked lmao what a loser

Far more than Ori

No, not in the slightest.

Self publish then instead of having a publisher. Why do you need 10 million from the publisher to hire staff and pay salaries? Sounds like the publisher turned you into a wagie.

Do you not have student loans? A house mortgage, car payments. AMERICA is built on debt

Not that much and there's so many strings attached. I was watching a few indie publisher GDC talks and they're always like "yeah we might get back to you... in a few months, with unreasonable milestones and also we're keeping everything we give you five times over". If you can keep a studio afloat for the fucking months it takes for them to even greenlight the money, just fasttrack and downsize the game and keep it all.

It's a scam! Hollow Knight was smart. Just use the government film grant scheme to get that shit to gold.

Why do you need 10 million from the publisher to hire staff and pay salaries?

Where else is the money going to come from?

Not that much

They literally gave him 10 million dollars

Imagine being given 12 million as budget for your indie game tier shit and then acting like you got ripped off. The people have reached a level of entitlement that can no longer be corrected. The nuclear holocaust can't come soon enough.

This but unironically.

Arbitrary standards based on a failing industry aren't a reliable metric. 10 million sales is a phenomenal success, if they'd spent less that would make them rich.

If you have a publisher you aren’t indie. They take on all the risk and keep all the reward.

Oh and he only made 20?
Alright maybe he deserved to fail, I rescind my complaints.

Imagine being so brainrotted by Anon Babble that you think video games are a failing industry

live in communist nation

get funding for vidya from father state

it's a smash hit and sells 55 million copies, because it is the only game in your communist country

the state keeps everything, because the state owns everything

stay poor in your shithole

You forgot that part, commie retard.

No I have none of those things because I'm not a retard like everyone else in this jew cucked world.

I hate every single indie dev who talks about money. They are just as bad as hackernews/linkedin tech/ai/crypto grifters

the best indie games I've played are free or almost free

People confuse failing with wasteful.

He didn't fail, he just didn't make a lot of profit
You don't take a risk you don't get the reward

Most people here think that every videogame is as easy to develop as an home made teenage game like Undertale or other pixel shit and low poly shovelware made for free and no skill requirements.

10m to make

2m in marketing

70/30 split

Next time hire an accountant and a lawyer for 50k and save a cool 5 mil.

and?
you personally don't need ten million dollars. what you need is a good environment to live in and that includes other people having good lives too.

so the state will use that money to make life better for everyone.

meanwhile his new game

oh no! I am still sad that we will never get another Ori game! lol.

So you just play vaporware? Hate to break it to you but video games are a product. Not everyone has a ultra rich dad willing to fund his autistic JRPG dreams. Nobody is going to work on vidya for free and you can't make truly great products as a solo dev

This is why self-publishing with early access or what not makes more sense.

20 mill off a 10 mill budget is pretty pathetic.
Especially because it's a 10 mill budget. 10 mill will buy you everything you could ever want and all he did was a sequel do a glorified XBLA game. I was under the impression he got like, maybe 200K to cobble a studio together after months of waiting and was robbed.

This is like finding out that EA actually wanted Titanfall 3 and was confused by the Apex Legends BR pitch.

10 mill will buy you everything you could ever want

You don't know anything about game budgets

Why didn’t this stupid fuck double down on the 2d platformer genre? Why did he venture into the soulslike genre which is already oversaturated?

It's not about ease or difficulty, it's about making projects too big. Don't have 10 million dollars? Don't spend 10 million dollars. It's the simplest most obvious principle in the world.

It is a side-scrolling 2D platformer, anon. It is not a real game, to be blunt.

2D platformers are one of the few genres more oversaturated than soulslikes

I hate every single indie dev who talks about money. They are just as bad as hackernews/linkedin tech/ai/crypto grifters

the best indie games I've played are free or almost free

You’re either a third worlder or a neet with no sense of understanding how money works. Hence why you love free stuff

10 million sales is a phenomenal success, if they'd spent less that would make them rich.

It's really not. 10 millions in 10 years means 1 million a year. With 1 million a year is very hard to keep a company afloat, giving a job and salary to more than 60 people every year makes these 10 millions just become nothing.
Things would be different if we would be talking about a solo dev making a simple low budget indie game. But this is not the case.

I have over 1500 games on Steam, I never said I don't pay for games

Not easy to do. Remember Bloodstained? That fucking thing went into dev hell and still somehow cost 8m dollars in crowd funding and Bloodstained wasn't really an impressive looking game both visually and mechanically.

It has very high production value for a 2D side scroller, it's not some pixel art game

I have over 1500 games on Steam, I never said I don't pay for games

You probably have buyers remorse. I can’t blame you then

Sure but which genre is more famous right now with lots of competition? why would people buy his game instead of elden ring nightfall?

I live giga comfortably in a first world country with making less than 40k a year. And you only need a PC for game dev. Literally just kill all game devs.

No Man's Sky is the definition of an indie dev getting way over their heads and even that cost far less than 10mil

in the publisher’s favor.

They keep $1.4M.

I don't know man...
If I invest 12 millions, taking a huge risk, and only gets 1.4m in return, I will be pissed too.

Well that's the problem isn't it, maybe that should be the case.

It was easy actually, they just didn't do it because people gave them money. castlevanias are dead easy to make.

Steam takes 30%.

$20M – 30% = $14M left

that is a lot of money for doing absolutely nothing

in other tweet of his:

Moon Studios is 90 people now, which is still a far cry from most other studios we’re competing with that are usually at least 3-4x our size.

90 people?? how

It's not that impressive. It is so unimpressive that I pirated, played for like 30 minutes, said "eh" and uninstalled, if I'm being honest.

You have a noble savage view of indie devs. If it was a low budget, I'd be a little outraged at the 20 mill in sales, but with a 10 mill budget? Eh. All they managed was a pedestrian 2D platformer with - look the character and environment art doesn't cost that much, Yoku's Island Express didn't reach 7 digits in budget and was all painted environments and was always actually fun.

That Microsoft money baby! Why do you think MS took 12 million form their sales and took 70% of their profit

I didn't say it was impressive, I said it had high production value, as in it took a lot of work to make

Your game cost $10M to make

Skill issue. Most indie devs don't spend more than $100,000 on total development costs.

There is no possible way they spent $10,000,000 making the game, and if they did, they are getting fucking brutally raped in the ass by their publisher embezzling money.

man he really really loves BLOOM doesn't he.

forums

digital distribtion

workshop distribution

screenshots

videos

streaming

guides

dlc distribution (apply all of the above again)

sure is a lot of money for "nothing" you fucking tranny

And I replied with a project that had similar production value and took less than 10% of the budget.

There's no way a tiny shitty game like ori should cost 10 million to develop. That game can be made for 1 million easily. He pocketed the money by paying himself ridiculous salary, now he's crying he's "broke".

Never trust the jew when he talks about money.

no wonder he's panicking about the review bombing with those operating costs

He didn't abuse and mistreat his staff. Him and his co-owner told edgy jokes in the company slack during covid to make light of a bad situation and a temp hire got offended on nobody's behalf.

You're a poor judge of the production value of a game because that looks substantially cheaper

Ah yeah the steam forums, how could we forget. Bunch of retards just complaining 24/7 and giving each other clown rewards is easily worth 1-2 million.

What is your favorite workshop mod for Ori and the Blind Forest and why do you think a forum which is hostable on a spare cellphone using less than 1% of the average home broadband bandwidth costs $8,000,000? Did Valve pay you $8,000,000 to write

How to jump

step 1 push button

thanks like and subscribe to my guides

in a text document and upload it or did they embezzle that money, too?

If is nothing then just don't put on steam, is just that easy.

sure is a lot of money for "nothing" you fucking tranny

t. bellular news

Never I’ve seen someone dick suck Gabe like this post.

I don't think my hard earned money should be used to fund other people's needs

look the character and environment art doesn't cost that much,

This is the main problem with Ori.
2D games have the reputation of being cheap. But with Ori the dev wanted to go against the thread and make a 2D game that is on pair with AAA standard. Using advance and in-house buolt game technology, physics and graphics pipeline that are far from cheap. The problem is that people just don't get it. Most people look at Ori and think, it's just another indie 2D game which is far from the reality of things. Development value for Ori was very high, from music production to graphics and engendering of the game.

There's no way a tiny shitty game like ori should cost 10 million to develop. That game can be made for 1 million easily.

Maybe if you’re indian.

Never trust the jew when he talks about money.

You see, this type of thinking is exactly why you’re not successful

He's kind of weaseling out of it but the $10 million dollars they were owed was them paying him and his employees to dev the game, essentially. That's what development costs are: wages, resources, stuff like computers, etc. The reason the publisher keeps most of the profit is because they are the ones taking a risk in this case, and they're the ones paying for the development. The dude was already getting paid, the $300k was just gravy.

The state want one thing and it's fucking your children in the ass (not figuratively).
Maybe you will want to rethink your post now.

steam has to potentially provide both of these for every game gabe hosts. a forum obviously does not cost 8 million dollars to host but that money will be contributing to the cost of having to host every other game's workshop content

Look it doesn't cost 9.2 million dollars to add another layer with an atmospheric painting pass, both look really good and comparable.

why did you post an anti-parasite picture to attack comunism ?

comunism is good when capitalist private company do it

classic endgame of all capitalist cocksucker

The fact that so many of us have fallen into the trap of staying in the hobby past childhood has hurt us beyond repair.

Your personality made you a loser. If videogames didn't exist you would have just pissed away your time with comic books or some other shit.

Publisher covers all dev cost, including dev salaries. That includes HIS salary as well. So he made $292,500 on top of the regular salary he was paying himself using publisher's money.

They took 70% of the money

But with that 70% they also paid the wages for the dev team and the other production costs and handled marketing, meaning the people that worked on it still got paid even if it flopped and lost money

He words it like he needs to self fund it as if he's going indie and not like he took 300K home after taxes, expenses, and everything else. If the publisher turned profit as it supposedly did, then it's just up to the publisher to say "Do it again."

Getting fleeced for an engine is pretty bad, but it's still a 2D engine, shouldn't have cost that much. Maybe he got hyper-fleeced and was just dumb.

There are so many ways Ori looks more expensive that you can see just from the trailer, posting a single screenshot is not a good argument for that because it's in the animation, the audio, everywhere
Also depends on how long the games are and the amount of content

He is complaining that he did not make enough to self fund his next game despite making a wildly successful game. He wanted the freedom to do what he wanted for his next game, but he will continue to suck publisher cock.

Every piece of art is hand drawd down to the light mapping, which is a very tidies and time consuming process. Animations, music, the way everything loads, required a lot of study and research. There are lots of things in Ori that people give for granted but they really aren't.

Publisher foots the entire bill

make money on top

this is bad

Yeah, you would get way more money if you somehow put out the same product while covering it yourself. But then you take all the risk of the project instead of them.
That’s how it goes.

Holy shit you are a huge faggot.

I'll give you some time in ze oven, anon

the usa is a communist country and you're a communist piece of shit

dilate

right looks like slop. most of the time less is more

It's not just a 2D engine. In order to make the game work with that level of details, the dev team had to develop their own pipeline and systems. They heavily modified the unity engine to the point they where calling it the "moonity enogne". They basically used unity as a framework for then building their own engine on top.

7. Now subtract tools + taxes.

Engine licenses (~$15K)

Now this is bullshit.
Engine and tool licenses are part of dev cost, and therefore must be included in the initial 10m expenses covered by the publisher.

11% return is pretty good anon

damn that sounds gay. no wonder they need 90 people and 10 millions becuase they suck so hard

Not good when you're taking so much risks.
Not every project the publisher funded will even make a return.

Probably means revenue share

so you're saying they made some really bad decisions

If videogames like crysis or half life where made today with people like you being the audience of videogames, they would never have become the success they where that also shaped the industry.

Apparently it's really great, though.

Thanks for conceding my correctness.

believing redditor lies

kill yourself

Just pointing out that he's using a real world example, not his own experience here. He's not talking about Ori, he's talking about using publishers.

1. Your game cost $10M to make.

2. You price the game at $20.

If a game with that budget is being sold at that price point something has already gone horribly wrong.

wait a second

1. Your game cost $10M to make.

A publisher funded it. They also spent $2M on marketing.

So you owe them $12M before you see a dime.

but also

8. So after selling 2M copies...

You, the dev, have ~$292K in the bank.

Your next game also costs $10M.

You’ve got 2.9% of that.

so he made a personal profit of 300k and he's complaining that he can't find another publisher??? is he retarded?

He's omitting the part where he got paid a good salary for the years he worked on the game lol, the 300k is just a bonus after everything's done.
He's the CEO and I don't believe for a second he wasn't paying himself a fancy "CEO salary" so that's AT LEAST 300k for a company this small.

He's complaining that he didn't make a profit but he really shouldnt be because he took the loan from the publisher in the first place

he didn't make money from ori and the blind forest because it's a shit game

this game had a publisher?

$12m

8 hour long metroidvania

I liked both Ori games but why the fuck would they cost that much

He's just unhappy that the game made $20m, and he only see $300k of that money.

very detailed animation

what don't creators understand that if you are published by somebody else, you are their tool, not the other way around. YOU made THEM money. They own your creation, they own the IP, even if you completely built it from scratch from your own ideas, it is not and will never be yours now, all because you sold your soul to a publisher.

b-but I couldn't have made the game without this massive team of people who worked soul-crushing hours for years to bring my idea to fruition

which proves that it's not YOUR game, it's the publisher's. How fucking hard is it for these pseuds to understand.

The first Ori absolutely did not cost that much, hes basically making up a story as an example
Ori 1 is very detailed but saying it cost 10m is blatantly bullshit, maybe the second one did

The co-founder of moon saying Ori 1 took way less to develop than almost everyone he talked to assumed should be proof of that

Why would he lie about it?

so the state will use that money to make life better for everyone.

yeah you know i understand thats the commie dream but the reality is that it never happens
what actually happens is tha th emoney is used to make life staggeringly rich and easy and luxurious for the party leaders and other .0001% at the top

meanwhile you, comrade, are still in food lines despite making great game

No good games would get made though because of Marx. Only despite of.

Im not sure if all publishers function like this, i think some dont necessarily have a hold over their IP like hype train digital

Ori 1 is very detailed but saying it cost 10m is blatantly bullshit, maybe the second one did

Just look at how many people worked on the hame in the credits and make up your mind. It's not like you work in the industry and actually know your shit afterall.

why not just press the magical write off button

Online tax experts are the best.

that $400 mil flop? don't worry they just use the magical tax write off button and it's actually a success

why do I have to pay taxes when 99% of the country is run by private companies

it's a transaction. publishers are willing to forego IP rights typically only if the creator already has notoriety and even then, the publisher will negotiate a larger cut of the profits to compensate. A complete indie who is struggling to develop in his mom's basement who comes crawling to a publisher to fund his galaxy-brain idea won't be able to negotiate IP rights.

publisher puts up all of the money

publisher gets rewarded for it

You pay for their next game and take no cut.

steam needs that 30% cut to add layers of gold to their toilets

...why

BECAUSE THEY JUST DO OK

people who excuse valve's greediness have never contributed anything of value to society

correct me if im wrong, but if i recall correctly the guy behind intravenous owns his IP, even though he was a pretty no-name developer with a tiny ass unsuccessful tycoon as his only prior title

Microsoft didn't actually pay a lot of their pet indies from back then. They just promised them access to their marketing and platforms if they signed the deal. It was never about getting the indies rich, it was about courting users to their platforms via the draw of indies. Almost all of them had similar stories. They got 1/6th of the revenue at best, then got told to fuck off.

guy who has never worked a day in his life thinks work is free

Ask your mother.

I agreed to all of these terms when I signed the publisher's contract

but I'm gonna bitch about it like a whiny faggot!!!!

really enjoying his meltdowns

Thomas Mahler spends years developing a game and makes 600k (before taxes)

Publisher risk its money and makes 1.4m (before taxes)

Gaben does nothing, yet makes 6m (before taxes)

No idea why people are so focused on the publisher.

It's very impressive that you are so dull brained that you managed to not learn basic stuff like that purely by osmosis.

Nobody on Anon Babble who learns how the game industry works through osmosis has any idea what the fuck they're talking about, as evidenced by this thread

How much do you think 1 skilled person costs for one year? And why is the number in your head $49.90? Are you for real?

Exactly this.

A huge budget doesn't guarantee a good game or good sales. The game has SOVL and it was from the passionate developers. A big budget was definitely a force factor for them but that's what it should be.

game with a 5 figure budget

yeah, because the game was chump change to the publisher. the publisher most definitely claimed a significant portion of the profit, with the creator retaining IP rights as the bulk of his share, purely to make a name for himself. but it also helps that the game is incredibly basic, so he probably didn't need all that money from the publisher, meaning the publisher assessed his project as relatively low risk. Again, it's a transaction. If you want to develop a game with high quality anything, assets, animation, art direction, breadth of content, etc, that will require a significantly larger budget than *looks at intravenous* some doorkickers ripoff that uses cellphone-quality pictures for character portraits. I could have probably funded that guys game, the publisher most likely handled legal, marketing and distribution for him, instead of him navigating those minefields himself.

valves' tax is kind of fuckhuge, but consider the following

while they are quite greedy versus the developer, they are insanely consumer friendly

the -30% tax unironically fucks shittier services and becomes less of a concern for better, greater games that just enjoy how good steam is for marketing, so its often even more consumer friendly

literally nobody provides a service as good as them

steam already puts a huge chunk of their profit into giving the consumer literally free money to buy games in their platform, and that money DOES go to developers when they buy games, so steam is straight up paying out of their pockets

maybe if everyone else trying to make an online store wasnt mentally retarded and ran by sycophant pests that dont enjoy games, dont actually care about games, and just want to try to make money from games, theyd be able to make something that competes with steam, force it to compete and lower its -30% cut, or maybe make them offer different deals. The result is the current stage, where theres hardly any developer or company speaking against steam's cut that isnt retarded/shitty/offering a shitty service.

the only legacy that's gonna be left in a few years time are the people who still want to fuck Ori and haven't moved onto another furbait protagonist

How is him talking about some numbers and giving insight to big publishing deals "manic spiraling" from some who's "ego and narcissism just can't be contained"? The fuck?

the publisher most definitely claimed a significant portion of the profit

Im in his fagscord, according to him the publisher itself shouldnt be getting all that big a cut. The assfucking from the other sources seems to be much bigger
Steam is leaving 70%, and from that, he gets his cash reduced from VAT in purchases in europe, or withholding tax if the game is sold in the US. Theres the USD to EUR conversion tax, and then theres local taxes. Despite that he still gets 33~% the cost of the sale at the end of the day

Are there more lottery winners or more successful indie developers?

hundreds of people

10 million

You're a child.

we need to make it harder for small studios to put their games out there

Ok, Ubisoft. Very cool.

You can create keys for free and sell them wherever you like and Valve takes 0%.

post scriptum
the second game of intravenous cost about $100-300k to make judging by his posts

If you put on your thinking pants for just 3 seconds you'd realize how extremely impossible it would be for a small dev team to ship out boxed copies to every store in an area and how doubly impossible it would be for them to convince a store to stock them if they weren't backed by something way bigger than what the guy in the OP got.

Because ever since slavery got outlawed skilled labor is expensive. Even with slavery keeping the slaves fed, housed, guarded and motivated wasn't all that cheap either.
You'll learn that when you start working.

That would be nice if his goal was buying a fancy car, but his goal is self funding a bigger video game.
I understand this because I can read. Why don't you understand it?

The legacy of Ori

Indie game white blob character memes

What gender is Ori

Ori copied Hollow knight

Get money from a publisher

Safely develop a game at no risk

Publisher in return takes a big portion of the money if the game is a success

This guy just didn't understand what he was signing into.
He thought a publisher was a reliable/safe way for him to chance at becoming a millionaire.
It's not, he either needs to shoulder risks himself or slowly build his name and make his studio a lower risk option so publishers are more willing to give a better split.

Are you gonna pay for the devs? Are they gonna work for free?

Ori 1 is very detailed but saying it cost 10m is blatantly bullshit

AAA garbage these days costs 200-600m. How is 10m hard to believe for a polished game like that with a decently probably too big team?

He understood perfectly what he was singing. He is explaining it.

The fact that you have to pay an accountant just to lie properly to the IRS or you will lose 50%+ of your income is absolutely insane and shouldn't exist.
Income tax in general is insane, tax purchases. Want to tax the rich more - charge higher taxes on luxury goods. It's that simple because right now this system where you pay less taxes the more money you make simply by paying an accountant to spend hours filling out the right forms for you is so antithetical to a functioning society that it's astounding we haven't collapsed entirely yet.

Even if you wanted to do what the accountant does yourself you can't because the rules/forms you have to fill out and lie on properly change every single year.

lots of the horror slop i see kids with the plushies all the time

AAA games are extremely wasteful so it would be more fair to bring that down to 100m~
the first ori game had about 20~ developers

id absolutely believe ori 2 cost 10~million but not ori 1
quote from the co-director :

explaining it

Stay indie (if you can).

Sounds like he's being salty and being passive aggressive complaining about it online.

not sure what you are mad about.
am I supposed to cry about every other country that did a no-no because I dared to explain how soviet union did things, you big fucking crybaby?

Well he didn't have to invest $12 million

They take on all the financial risk. If you get a loan from the bank and the game flops you're fucked but if you have a publisher funding the game they will take the loss instead.

Spend $10m on a sequel just to get accused of copying a more successful $50k game made by 3 aussies in a cave.

No wonder he's constantly seething.

He could try to be more original

You’re left with ~$292,500

commie math
he was left with 12 milion, he just spend it all
the 300k$ is just a bonus

Dev life is way less glamorous than it looks.

while he paid himself 200k$ +bonuses for a decade and drives his sports car to his job

truly an opressed man, getting black lungs from the dust in his fancy office

$12 million

Yes it does.

At least the 10 million game sequel actually came out

A simple flat tax works as a massive tax equalizer but people are too brainwashed to see this

I had an identical experience to this earlier on pol when someone posted about Trump working with Palantir and actually said "Democrats would be criticized heavily for anything like this".
Upon responding that Hillary said during a debate on national television that she wanted a Manhattan Project for the Internet to "stop bad people from committing crimes before they happened" and was defended heavily for such statements they just responded "Trump is bad and you're deflecting".
People too entrenched in the Red vs Blue war always act like this. Everything is an attack with them, every word every movement its painted as an attack to the political midwit.

You get $600K. They keep $1.4M

he signed a shitty contract and didn't expect it to be a hit, what more is there to say

silksong confirmed 2025 though

some guy wants to make a game

spend millions on paying him and his team to make the game for years

spend millions marketing the game so somebody will actually buy it

game sells pretty well

"what do you mean i don't get to keep the full $20M???"

"what do you mean you want a cut of the profits for taking on the risk and paying me all throughout development???"

wtf did this guy expect? also a ~$1.4 million return on a $10 million investment over 5 or 6 years is terrible, publisher could've just dumped it in a basic savings account and gotten more than that back

If "risk" was what created value then chronic gambling addicts would all be billionaires.

A game like Ori was very risky for any normal company to spend 10 million on

he made a game by himself that people wanted.

he got lucky
there are far better games and they sell nothing

you zoomer nigger why the fuck are you lying

for every Ori that makes a modest profit, the publisher has several games that are a net loss. and tom is acting like he never saw that $10 million, in reality he already spent it on his own salary, the salary of his employees/coworkers, the lease on his office, etc. he and his team are the ones who spent that money, without the publisher, they'd be paying that out of their own pocket.

Okay but the idea that guys who do no work but just move money around deserve all the profits is a capitalist framework. It doesn't have to be that way.

sure. and the socialist framework would be that either the game doesn't get made period.

i guess the alternative is something like kickstarter, but if the game legitimately took $10M to make, good luck hitting that goal

and if it didn't take that much, why did they ask for that much money? if it could've been done for, say, $500k, then the profit share would've been 30% of like $11 million dollars instead of 30% of $2 million

If they think it’s unfair than they should ‘t do it. If you agree to it then you’re fine with it

He got lucky his studios got picked up by Microsoft.

Life with Microsoft was so good that now he lives in another dimension.

He now expect life to still be easy without financial support from a tech giant.

If he wanted to keep having an easier life he could just have decided to stay within Microsoft and even let them acquire his studios instead of doing the heroic and full of shit gamedev wannabe.

this grifter needs to fire his jewish accountant

How else is giving away 10 million dollars to fund studios going to work?
You can't do it at a loss unless you are government funded,

The only way to even just match your spending is

Give away money to potential candidates for success

Take a portion of the excess pie for successful ones to fund all the ones that failed

That's just limiting it to the studios too and not accounting for the cost running the publisher outside of that.

The only way the dev is getting more is if they can convince the publisher they are more likely to succeed.

why does this leave out that he was getting paid the entire time this project was being made?
the studio he started, the company, has 300k in profit for the next project, he as a person, also got paid during this time.
that's what the "10m to make" is, the staff paid, he got paid, whatever wage he set.

just complete bullshit

No, valves cut is incredibly small
the 30% of sales is usually MORE than made up for by the marketing they provide.
Let alone all the features they have access to for launching on steam, sure, if you are making a giant cross platform game you still need to make your own stuff and you cannot leverage steams features as much, but sony takes 30% too as does microsoft, physical stores take even more, so it isn't a concern about steam then.
But if you are SOLELY releasing on PC and SOLELY on steam? valve could take 50% and it would STILL provide you with more value than you would have gotten spending that same money making and rolling out the services they provide. Not to mention that you don't even pay this cost if your game doesn't sell, instead of needing to pony up to setup servers, distribution, and a significant amount of marketing, you get to pay that AFTER your game releases from money made by sales, before tax as well, rather than having to spend money on those things.
no, their 30% cut is amazing, go complain that physical stores are usually 50%

entire thread is based off dishonest information
theres no actual amounts listed, just made up numbers a liar has presented. MS probably has the real receipts and they were extremely wasteful and inept

Dev life is way less glamorous than it looks.

No it isn't. It looks like a guy sitting in a room in front of his pc doing work. That's what it is.

This guys crying that he (presumably) made a decent wage and then got 300k on top of that?
And if he wants to do it again he has to....do it again?

Take your 300+k, live frugally. make a game that people want on your own and take 70% of the revenue.
Oh you dont want the risk? then go to your publisher and milk them dry and your game can sell 2 copies with no risk to you

entire thread is based off dishonest information

The entirety of the Ori franchise existence in a nutshell. Nothing new.

Until you Valve detects an anomalous sale/key activation ratio and takes away your ability to generate keys

Idk about all that but, disappointing story aside, Ori 2 is one of the best games I have ever played

Publisher

Stay indie

In reality, the allure of a publisher who can help shit out merchandise was too strong to pass.

And you still can’t fund your next game. Here’s why:

1. Your game cost $10M to make.

A publisher funded it.

I mean... that's the whole point

He has no reason to lie

You shouldnt be losing 50% to fucking taxes, thats just straight up exposing himself as a fucking dumbass who doesn't know how taxes work.

You shouldnt be losing 50% to fucking taxes

Tell that to the government

Nigger, the government has a bunch of things you can do to lower it. Again the guy is a fucking idiot

If "risk" was what created value then chronic gambling addicts would all be billionaires.

Risk doesn't create value, risk demands value. Gambling addicts don't demand and are unable to demand corresponding value for their risk, because casinos are the ones expecting to make a profit off of them.

That really depends on so many things like what country you're from and how you're doing business

i was defending valve there you dummy
but you have to be delusional to think valves' cut isnt massive. Theres a reason why all these shitty store attempts like Epic can only ever bring up the % cut as a real advantage, its by far the lowest bar

Alright but were talking about the US here. He has plenty of options he was just too stupid to take any of them. And i highly doubt europe for that matter doesnt have things like that either. Its common globally.

I have a game published on steam and i have no publishers. Steam leaves me with 70%, and the final ammount i get per sale is about 40~% because of several taxes like US royalty tax, the tax of my local country (finland), and several other taxes like conversion rates
tldr You have no idea of what you are talking about. A company having it be as low as 35% is completely possible

It's common to pay a shitton of taxes when you run a small business

hes from austria

all good,but when are you going to do fear&hunger 3 you lazy fuck

Cool so do you have a llc? Do you put your expenses as business? Do you apply for small business tax breaks? Do you apply for state tax breaks? No, i know you don't, your another retard. You have options and i actually do know what the fuck i am talking about.

Everyone does that shit you dunning kruger idiot

OP says otherwise

literally none of this will prevent majority of the taxes involved
but please, mr person who never published a game before, please demonstrate to me how youre actually the right one and not literally everyone else that has put out a game before, by showing me anything demonstrating that either of these methods will skip, for example, the US royalty tax

What a load of shit, defer your income for instance would greatly lower how much taxes you have to pay. Instead people like OP are a retard and take it in huge lump sum and get fucked in the ass. You're just coping because you realized you got fucked by your own stupidity.

no proof provided

concession accepted, i wish you luck in your fruitful gamedev carrer. you are gonna make a lot of games right?? right????

man who has never run a business tells other people how to run a business

A video game is not any different than any other product, you still can get tax breaks. Whine harder. LLC income tax for instance doesn't go to fucking 50%.

tax is highly complicated and depends on many things, if you read his post the tax comes from multiple countries and sources
I've also published a game from outside the US and the story is the same

Neither does self employment tax, even if you're taxed on 600k as self employment the most you're paying even in states with high state tax is 43%, and probably as low as 34-37% in other states.

You don't pay a foreign countries income tax..

make 2 artsy low-budget platformers

they sell well

follow up by trying to make "PoE but Dark Souls" with a massive budget behind it

game flops and studio is dying

Many developers break themselves on the shoals of Dark Souls

Nobody said you did

using the word toxic without a hint of irony in any context other than literal poison or a romantic relationship

go back, faggot

Alright but OP specifically says he paid 50% in income taxes. Dumbass fucked himself.

Lmao this guy made the worst deal ever

how is using it to describe a romatic relationship ok?

Which is why you don't pay yourself directly.

No it doesnt it just says "taxes"

your next game also costs $10M

lol what

no, you were saying valves 30% is fine because no one else has been able to make a good enough store to compete with it so they can't complain.
epic has straight up said their 12% cut is unsustainable if they actually want to make profit from it, EGS was started as a way to leverage lawsuits not to actually be a serious competitor and be a functional store.

steam provides more for that 30% than ANY other storefront and is the only one actually earning its cut in my opinion.
sony charges 30%, they offer far less and are significantly more restrictive
microsoft is 30% on the xbox store, they offer a good amount but far far less than steam.
and if you are unhappy with console comparisons how about we look at pc
gog is also 30%, it offers no where near what steam offers, yet there are no problems with gog taking 30%?
itch is only 10%, but itch basically offers nothing except being a store on a webpage and handling downloads, its a barebones experience with a minimal price and the most reasonable comparison to steam.

If you think all that needs to happen is a store has a 20% cut and can reasonably offer a similar user experience to steam to make it a better prospect for developers you are delusional, indies will still exclusively release on steam because of the sheer amount that is provided at that price, not to mention no other store even providing a decent user experience.
Fucking valve will unironically implement the steam features into your game for you, there have been plenty of indie developers who said they were struggling to make use of certain aspects and integrate them into their game and went to steam for support and had someone literally just code and implement it for them for free as apart of supporting it to fit their game.
no other store is doing that.

valves 30% cut isn't just because no one else is competing for a reasonable experience for users, but valve offers more for that 30% than anyone else offers period.

If he is going to list 50% on taxes, it absolutely is going to be mostly income taxes, there is no other way it could get that high.

1. Your game cost $10M to make

there's your fucking problem

AAA can use that kind of money
but for indie games you never go past 10k

He literally just told you how it can get that high, it's a combination of multiple taxes

Can you believe they wanted their TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS back?

Is this guy real

Both Ori games were fucking brilliant.

for indie games you never go past 10k

That's enough to hire 1 person for 1 month

literally just told you

where, he didnt list shit

A poster in this thread

maybe in california
in normal countries it's at least three students for a whole year

Also don't forget he had a publisher fund it, so he actually isnt a fucking indie to begin with

Where is 300 dollars a month a livable wage? Africa?

your game cost $10m to make

stopped reading right there

But it didn't flop. He just told you it made 20 million. It's just that the 20 millions went to Microsoft.

Tbh I can't really imagine how Ori could cost $10m. It's literally just one guy to draw cute backgrounds and a couple animators to make a dozen models. Add a small dev team of 5 to 10 guys and that's it.

Man, when he sign those terms he got fucked hard

jesus he's really deepthroating valve with all his might

when he sign those terms he got fucked hard

This is a completely average publishing deal

Seriously, Microsoft paid for everything and he's surprised they take most of it? How the fuck did he think it would work out?

It looks great though. Just like Ori it has a very unique and distinctive artstyle, or as you like to call it, SOVL

He said making second game is still very difficult even if first game was a major success unless you and your employees are willing to invest most of the money they made with the first game

And v tards are coming up with most retarded explanations

Ori didn't cost that much

There is this thing called giving example you autist retard faggot

Should've taken a better deal

Of course v tards know literally better than everyone else in every single field

He got the salary

Yeah even that's not enough to entirely fund the next game that's what he is talking about

youre mostly entirely right, one small thing however

>He got the salary

Yeah even that's not enough to entirely fund the next game that's what he is talking about

considering how insanely wasteful No Rest For The Wicked manages to be, how much money that shit bleeds, he definitely got a fuckton of cash, much more than enough to fund the next game

I don't think he got many millions of dollars.
And even in rare case has fuck ton of money it would be an exception and not the rule therefore the point still stands

Making one succesful game won't make the devlopment of another of around same size all that much easier.

Unless it's something like balatro or something other viral tiny games ofcourse but those are the exceptions

Oh kcd embracer deal makes sense now

The point is that publisher deals can be brutal and you're better off not taking them

so he could fund the first game with 10M out of his own pocket? don't forget the 2M on marketing.

capital and risk.

hang yourself from a tree faggot

too bad the gameplay is ass for the so called revolution of the genre

you and your employees are willing to invest most of the money

huh? if the first game was a major success, the publisher will be more than happy to fund the second one.
you take 10M from the publisher for the first game and then cry that you don't have money for the second? you never had money for the first either

So basically it's like this?

Dad i want to work at vidya

Dad: OK good luck

Build XP along the way

Bored by the suits dictating the company and decided to quit

Time to use the XP for good now

Money problem, call daddy

Dad: OK son i'll give you some money, make sure you sell the game well

Make good game and the game sold well

He dindu nuffin wrong and basically keep his soul intact instead slaving to the chink

Western work ethic only exists on the clock people here largely don't try nearly as hard as they would have you believe. This is why you don't even see indie FPS overtaking the big publishers FPS. The easiest 3D genre to develop and none of these guys want to lift a finger if any of the risk falls on their own shoulders or without a guaranteed salary. Western devs would rather be a contractor fixing brown code and never actually accomplish anything than spend 2-3 years with 2 dozen other experienced devs making a garage multiplayer FPS. They're all out for themselves and will happily let somebody else eat their lunch if it means 8 hours 5 days a week with a month off. Literal slave mentality. The average indie dev has infinitely more guts than an industry burnout.

remember those numbered game dev threads?
was likely a wannabe publisher keeping those going to milk the gullible

If it was easy to self host don't you think all the big ones like M$ and EA wouldn't have come crawling back after years of having their own storefront? The sheer amount of users that can now see your game more than makes up for the cut unless you're some kind of gigs-success like minecraft/league of legends/fortnite.

the publisher

yeah that's problem, they might be happy to fund a sequel but what about another game?
he is specifically talking about success of one game not giving you total freedom to make another one

just have three malaysian interns make your game, what could go wrong

now you're thinking like a tech ceo

it makes sense in that context, whereas the only people calling others toxic are faggot leftoids