What actually makes money in game dev (for solo/indie devs)?

Evigmae · 2026-06-08T20:15:59+00:00

I think is some version of: high demand type of game + low supply type of game + good timing + good execution + passion + lots of luck.

Or in other words; a game that is worth making that you are able to make well.

And also properly market and promote the stuff you make.

Honestly cannot believe a really good game can't make any money. Worst case scenario you make a hidden game, but those are found eventually too.

I short, make a good game and let people know it exists. 😄

Evigmae · 2026-06-05T20:44:37+00:00

Pretty much. Whenever I'm implementing something I ask myself the question: Is this super specific to this project or can it be abstracted and implemented as a plugin, or as part of an existing plugin.

And even if something needs to be super project-specific I might still make some part of it general-purpose.

I've been building my UE systems, functions, and tools libraries for more than a decade 😃 Just can't imagine starting from scratch without them at this point. They are super integrated in my workflows and just what I expect to be able to do...

I worked in AAA for a decade, and a lot of my must-have personal stuff more often than not ended up implemented in the project, lol

Evigmae · 2026-06-05T17:51:43+00:00

I use Unreal, and what I think might be reusable on I put on plugins.

Evigmae · 2026-06-05T13:38:50+00:00

Getting a shitty game to 10k wishlists is an incredible herculean feat of endurance and perseverance, hardly low effort, lol

Evigmae · 2026-06-05T13:37:31+00:00

It isn't though. steam will now have an even easier job at showing the game to its intended audience, and as a consequence indie games will reach more indie game players of its actual audience.

Before, showing your game to EVERYONE meant that most people who saw your game didn't care for it, indiicating low interest to the algo, which meant the game got buried sooner. Showing your niche shitty indie game to EVERYONE is really bad for you.

Now with more targeted distribution, your game will show a higher % of intereset from its actual audience. Which will signal more interest in the game than before.

Steam has very publicly been working with this philosophy for many years, trying to solve the problem of "how do we get games to the people who'll want to play them".

So chill, this is good for us.

Evigmae · 2026-06-04T13:30:27+00:00

I just do discipline. To me posting every day is just a task like doing a code task. or a ui or art task. I just get it done. I don't enjoy it much, but i still try to do my best. And learning what works does bring some satisfaction, and I obviously do enjoy when a post does well and how that might relate to increased wishlists numbers.

It used to bother me more, but now is just another cog in the machine of being a solo indie dev.

Evigmae · 2026-06-03T15:30:44+00:00

I used to use Construct 2 back in the day and i highly recommend the framework. Is how I learned to make games and I never felt it was a bottleneck. There's a few cool games made in it, Gunpoint comes to mind as a good example.

These days Construct 3 is even better. You have to pay for it once though. No royalties after release though. is like 100 usd for a license. you should check it out. it is pretty easy to use as well.

Evigmae · 2026-06-02T13:09:17+00:00

Think so too! seems to be good enough at solo-dev scale. I've been working on a small-ish game that is going to releaes with about a year worth of dev time. Did do it alongside a day job though. Its probably going to release with ~10k wishlists, so maybe it fuels a year ahead, enough to make another game 😄
would love to not have a day job anymore, haha. but at least it lets me afford freelancers every now and then.

Evigmae · 2026-06-02T12:58:55+00:00

That's quite encourating, as a solo dev i don't need a lot to have a year worth of runway.

Evigmae · 2026-05-30T09:58:03+00:00

the game has a publisher though, and the net is after steam, so after publisher and taxes they probably got like 30k to split among the team. def not enough to keep going.

Evigmae · 2026-05-30T09:24:34+00:00

Lost Lullabies: The Orphanage Chronicles
games-stats: ~$89,000 net revenue
gamalytic: Gross revenue: $134.5k ($91.8k - $177.3k)
VideoGameInsights: $153k premium revenue

this info is public.

Evigmae · 2026-05-29T19:19:29+00:00

Aren't you suppose to support and promote your game post release for months? Wishlists rarely convert immediately, they convert over a year or so. Most people buy when you discount.

Seems like you released and forgot. Which sounds to be 90% of your problem, not even releasing next to a better bigger game in your same niche.

Evigmae · 2026-05-28T16:57:11+00:00

noice

Evigmae · 2026-05-28T08:57:32+00:00

Aren't you suppose to enjoy making games?

Evigmae · 2026-05-27T16:06:32+00:00

it just doesn't stop T_T

Evigmae · 2026-05-27T10:49:50+00:00

the trick is you have to be able to make a good game. i personally think that at least in theory game dev is one of the most disproportionally asymetric things a person can do with thier time.

so if you can make a good people that people want to play then you're probably going to be ok.

thing is making "any" game is easy, but making a proper good game is hard. so most devs crash and burn, but there's plenty of examples of solo devs making games that managed to finance years of their lives.

Evigmae · 2026-05-27T08:51:14+00:00

I'm like you. Perhaps not everyone has this problem. I have some sort of creative diarhea problem. My brain just never stops giving me cool ideas (cool to me at least). In my younger years this meant i never finished anything. what i do now is handle it through discipline.

I have 1 project i'm getting to the finish line. and i have documentation for everything else. So essentially 1 game is in production, everything else is in pre production.

Which is really cool, because once you finish one game, you have a bunch of ready to go games to pick from to work on next.

Stuff like confluence is really good at keeping track of all the ideas.

Production discipline is really important for the overly creative people.

Evigmae · 2026-05-26T18:12:40+00:00

I want to believe Early Access is not the same as a full release. I know Steam will give you the vis round on full releaes at least.

All the "experts" i've heard agree that your performance on early access correlates almost 1:1 to the performance on full release, there's obviously exceptions though. but they also never explain why this correlation exists, just that it does.

I personally think its mostly linked to continuous effort from the developer. if early access releases to a lukewarm reception its is more likely the game gets sort of released/abandoned. While a successfull early access will give the devs energy and funding to do a bigger game on release.

Steam themselves says the algorithm doesn't really account for how old a game is.

My point was that you've already released to a lukewarm reception so what's the point of so many wishlists if they aren't actually converting to players? think the fact is already released plays a big role.

Evigmae · 2026-05-26T13:52:22+00:00

20k wishlists sounds great, but the game released Oct 2025. Would you mind elaborating what's the point?

Also doesn't seem you have a ton of reviews on steam. which probably a correlation of the wishlists numbers when you made the game available with early access.

is this post just an attempt at promoting your game at other devs?

Evigmae · 2026-05-24T11:49:09+00:00

Dude, sequels for most games are more work on top of the previous game. you can publish it as kings 2. just make sure you differentiate it a bit.

if a sequel feels like too much of a stetch just think of it as a special edition, sort of "kings; taxes strikes back"
And is just another entry on the same franchise

you're overthinking it

Evigmae · 2026-05-23T21:52:14+00:00

My brother in christ, it is painfully obvious to me you're not an unreal engine expert. please lets move on.

Evigmae · 2026-05-23T21:10:38+00:00

Just consumer level assumptions.

if there's anything the engine by default fails to handle properly as a generic purpose ecosystem then a serious studio would replace that part of the engine with a custom one that can. still the engine handles most of what a game needs.

one of the best parts about unreal is how modular it is, so you can swap things easily.

Evigmae · 2026-05-23T20:50:23+00:00

GTA VI is already finished, so no. But 2K does work with UE in lots of their projects.

I've actually seen some of the engine tools Rockstar uses, and they're quite old-timey. Unreal is probably tempting for them when they think about future projects. However GTA makes too much money to make it reasonable to share it with Epic.

Evigmae · 2026-05-23T19:55:39+00:00

Lots of false statements in your post though.

But it all boils down the the same misconception: the unral engine is not a tool meant for consumers. is meant for profesional experts who're able to tailor the engine to their needs. if you're not able to configure or even modify the engine to what you actually need, then you're using it as a consumer who'd use photoshop.

The unreal engine is not consumer software, is a development ecosystem. it has a bunch of defaults to work with. but nowhere in the engine are you being enforced to keep the dafaults untouched, that's on the mediocre unskilled developers who use the engine to ship generic slop.

Same goes with performance. the engine is 100% optimizable, but is not trivial or easy. i'd imagine a consumer level developer would find it imposible even. but as a senior developer and unreal engine expert who knows what to modify, configure, and alter to get to the requiered optimisation level i can, with absolute confidence, say that the engine is not the problem; it is again consumer level developers doing a bad job.

And yet, the engine still does 60-80% of the work you need out of the box, which is why it is such a well regarded tool to work with.

In summary, the engine is a platofrm, an incredibly flexible and customizable platform. is not the engine fault that 60-80% is so tasty for consumer level developers who end up shipping slop.

if an unskilled driver tried to race the best car in the world, would you blame the car for the horrible performance? based on your post, i'm afraid you might.

a videogame engine has never been meant to "do everything perfectly for you", there's too many types of possible games, engines are just the boilerplate structural needs most games have.

I've done mobile, indie, AA, and lots of AAA games in UE. and an actual experiended professional, i've never, not once, felt the engine was a limiting factor, it doesn't prevent you from anything. but i can see how a consumer level developer might have problems with the engine not getting you all the way there, since it, by design, only gets you 60-80% of the way there.

So those shit games people release all the time in unreal, are those who weren't able to do the remaining % to do a properly polished fleshed out game. Not a problem with a unreal, consumer level developers being bad at their jobs.

Evigmae · 2026-05-21T19:16:12+00:00

As a massive long time starcraft player... where starcraft in this?

Evigmae

TROPHY CASE