Any unity financial success stories in the last few years?? (i hope!)

Hey guys does anyone have any financial success stories to share with their game? I hope to release my space shooter in the next few weeks and I'd really love to hear something encouraging or at least see some good work that other people have found success from. Please do share I really believe that I could profit from my game and I know others have profited from theirs but by chance do you have a good story to tell?

:mrgreen:
:mrgreen:
:mrgreen:

 

Just check and see games made with unity.

 

Looks like no ones rolling in cash as of recently here

 

We are very successful, over here with Unity. Not so much with mobile though unfortunately. Depends how you measure success though.

 

My friend made 42 cents on ads....Does that count?

 

TBH I don't think anyone here that lurks these forums has even made a good amount. I see a lot of talk about people who claim they know a lot and don't do this but do this and what do they have to show for their great knowledge?

TBH you could probably follow Hack n Slash tutorials and have a more completed project then 95% of the people here.

 

This is based purely on speculation, but I would guess that the indie game industry is much like any other creative en devour ( music, writing, etc ): you're either working for almost 0 or negative dollars, or you've broken through a wall and hit the big ( or at least semi-big ) time. I don't think there's going to be a lot of in-between.

Off the top of my head I know Kerbal Space Program was made with Unity. I have no idea if it made them rich or not, but I would imagine it's at the very least allowed them to continue what they're doing.

 

I've been trying for a long time, but to be honest just not even close to breaking even with the money invested in Unity and hardware. But I'm solo and have made lots of smaller games that I've put on Kongregate, and made a couple of dollars on.

Most people say that you should not give up you're day job, and they are right (if you're lucky enough to have a day job that pays above poverty level wages).

Unity and tools like it make it possible for more and more people to write games. Every year the bar is raised higher and higher and the price of games has dropped below free, big companies pay money to advertise their free games.

Combine this with the fact that the economy has not recovered and games are a luxury that must compete with other forms of entertainment.

Don't get me wrong, making games with Unity is fun and empowering, but everyone can do it now so you have to be way better at it to make a living in this space.

You might actually be better off working on middleware or game supporting systems, then at least you can tap into the millions of people using Unity to make their next big game with Unity.

Look at kickstarter and unless you are a big name in the industry or already have at least one level with top quality art and animation then you will probably not even make a ripple.

Good Luck.

 

Thomas was alone

 

it depend on what you mean by success...
i have made 63 cents from ads in my first release game here in kongregate so yeah, financially that is not a big deal, however, i can say that recently am making a good amount of cash as a freelancer, the clients want ios or android games, and i made them with unity, so i guess this count too right ?

 

I earn enough to keep working full time. To me that's a success.

 

Very much is, must be us northerners .. Hopefully the tidal's and wind didn't cause any issues the other day ..

I look at it this way, there's a lot of people in the mobile market. Which if your lucky enough to be recognised can be a big money earner.

Or you can release something graphically superior, with better gameplay than your competition.. I wouldn't restrict the terms to Unity, I'd be interested in general how many indie's have actually done well for themselves because I've only seen relatively little.

 

I think this is what most of us here on the forums are gunning for....Congrats!

 

youll probably find the people making money are too busy to be on here..

I assume Folk Tale is doing well as something that's come out in the last year... There was The Other Brothers. Not sure how much money was made with that title, but it got some good attention on release from memory.

 

Lol nah, didn't cause me any issues as I never ventured outside.

Thanks. I'm my experience you need to give people what they want and also give yourself something you're interested in developing. If you can find something in the middle then you're good. With both my 'successful titles' I found a hole in the market and filled it. With my failed titles I just made a game for the hell of it.

 

The asset store is a great source of steady income. The only limit is how much effort you put into it.

I think artists should be considering the long-term value of their art. If you use traditional media, you can have three sources of income: the artwork in the game + selling the assets online + selling prints and originals of the art. There are other smaller streams of income, like recording a tutorial of how you make the art while you are making it, that some people might also consider. Using purely digital limits your future income because almost nobody wants to buy prints of digitial art.

 

But I'm pretty sure OP is measuring success in cold hard cash. Notch amounts of bills! That's undeniable success, but realistically we might have to settle for being happy and proud of what we do, and enjoying life because of it and such... bleh. ;-)

Man, I want that too!

Hopefully, someday I'll be able to say the same, that'd be my definition of success as well.

 

What about that ashes cricket game?

Bad piggies I assume has made a lot.

 

This is something more people should get involved with. I love playing around with Unity but I haven't even come up with an idea that could become a game. I have found the asset store to be a successful venture though. And I've seen my monthly revenues rise. I published my asset in mid September and made just under $400 for that month. October was just under $700. And November was just under $1,200 and I'm closing in on $500 for this month already only into the 8th day. I also have roughly $600 worth of sales through Fast Spring.

I think the Asset Store can definitely bring great success. Now... while it seems like quite a bit I also strive for good support so I have spent an absolute ton of time providing it. Some has been bug fixes and a lot has been just helping people use the asset but it has definitely been rewarding. I'm kicking around ideas and definitely trying to come up with another asset to sell.

Another thing I've seen mentioned is that you can sell bits of your game in order to fund your game. Now I wouldn't sell original art assets as they are a lot of what make your game unique. But if you come up with some great new systems that make developmentt easier... such as a great new object pooling system or inventory system... think about selling it on the asset store. If it's something that took you a significant amount of time to build but is scalable and/or portable then there are likely others who would be more than willing to pay for it as an asset. It helps you recover the costs and it helps them avoid incurring the extra costs. Especially if implementing it would require them to hire outside development work.

 

The topic kind of implies that success or failure has something to do with Unity (the tool) itself?

 

I've been lurking around this thread since it was created, and I'd wager some of the guys from the other larger teams are too.

One reason it's hard to find cold hard facts is because quite often distribution agreements contain clauses preventing the publication of sales and financial data. Some Indies do breach these clauses from time to time and post sales data on gamasutra reporting on the impact of sales promotions. Another reason is that often full-time developers are too busy taking care of their business, skim-read forums for useful information, and post less frequently.

From what I've seen if you are a talented solo developer, preferably with a low life-cost base, you could fund yourself full-time via the asset store, or freelance commissions. Having a visible product in the asset store would certainly help with the latter. That is one form of success. Alternatively there is mobile - shorter development lifecycles and costs with direct market access are the main reasons why developers flooded to the channel. Zombieville is a great example of mobile success. I'd wager however that it's become far more difficult now to be a success in mobile due to saturation.

For larger teams, larger budgets are required, and unless a team secures a meaningful global distribution deal it's going to be very difficult to make the sales required to make the game financially viable. Before a team gets to that point, they'll need to have at least some funding in place raised either privately or via crowd funding, and that has it's own quality bar that needs to be achieved acting as a barrier to entry.

The title of the thread mentions financial success, but further definition is required. Large and well known studios can shift large volumes, but net profit ( lets use the rudimentary revenue minus costs measure rather than say EBITDA ) can end up negative resulting in their demise if it's a multi-year trend. A solo developer can make more net profit than a large corporation in a year, and on that basis could be considered more successful.

Are there success stories around for teams using Unity? Absolutely. But success is not black and white, and only in the medium term ( 5-10 years ) can their success truly be measured. An increasing number of titles on Steam Early Access are developed using Unity: Folk Tale, KSP, WFTO, Castle Story, Godus being five examples. For these titles worldwide revenue ( inc. Kickstarter ) will have been significant; certainly enough to make development financially feasible. Perhaps the best known title using Unity by an renowned studio is Hearthstone by Blizzard.

This is a Golden Age for Indie developers. Is it easy? Heck no. It requires funding, talent, creativity and experience in multiple disciplines - not just game development - to produce a high-quality market-relevant offering, maximize commercial opportunities, and to ensure financial stability throughout.

TL;DR - Yes.

 

This is a very interesting point. There is a lot of advice floating around here to pick a small project and finish it in just a few months. That might still be generally good advice for a new dev, but from a monetary standpoint, it's becoming worse advice because the mobile channel has saturated. In short, too many people listened to that advice and are now paying for it.

 

There are quite a few threads on this. Just top of my head :

App Store / Google Play Store:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/93625-Unity-iOS-iPhone-Apps-sales-(Updated-thread)
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/45452-How-many-sales-do-you-make-per-day
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/14...your-provide-sales-stats-on-your-games-please
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/73095-Sales-numbers-from-the-Mac-App-Store-opening-day


Mika Mobile (of Zombieville USA and Battleheart fame) in particular made millions, as with the Crescent Moon Games (of the Ravensword and Aralon fame); Temple Run 2 was made in Unity too, and I am sure that one made couple of millions easily. MADFINGER is definitely making mad money with their super hits such as ShadowGun and Dead Trigger series. There are a lot more (some I am not privy to disclose), but you only have to do some Google search to find out the current hit games that were made in Unity on App Store to guess the sales numbers.


Also, there are quite a few developers making money on Asset Store too, namely:


Plus the NGUI guy, and PlayMaker...although I am pretty sure comparing to App Store, Asset Store success is miniscule by comparison.

 

This infamous unity collar guy once in a while shows examples of the top grossing mobile games that all use Unity in the blog or some interviews.
Bottom line is, the successful people are too busy being successful, no time lurking in forums and brag about it.

I earned at least 20000% more money in the AssetStore than on any of my published games. Which doesn't tell a lot at all, it's not enough to make a living out of it, so far

 

Its true you never really see many solid success stories. There's a little hype here and there but honestly I think that's a just a few people who lucked out.

 

That's not true, in my opinion.
You can find equally many success as failure stories on the internet. Important point is, none of these have anything to do with your own success. You just get sidetracked by such stories when you are in the middle of working on your own. They can lift your spirit high up to the sky or push it straight down to the ground.
We will all fail and we will get lucky eventually. We just have to keep going.

I'm thiiiiiiiiis far from being a succesful developer, yet I kept going at this gamedev thing for over 10 years and only this year I got lucky with a project on the AssetStore. I'm still not rich, but it gets in some money - for me this is a first succss
I read tons of advice on gamedevelopment, literally every blogpost that I could find, adapted things out of these posts on my own projects, tried collaborations, paid freelancing jobs, whatever I could catch. I read up every single little information on how to succeed, how to improve....yet it all held me back from doing actual work.

 

Well if you have the links to all these finance success stories (recent, and financially quantitative) post the links as it would be interesting to read them.

 

Welp I stopped collecting these tidbits since it didn't help me at all. It's just numbers for products I am not creating. Also I said, you can find them, not I have them on a plate for you
A quick google search gave me this, though - maybe that can serve as a starting point:
http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-game-revenue-sales/

Oh and the David Helgason bit:
http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Unity+news/news.asp?c=54745&territory=asia

This just came in now - 100.000 copies sold of Device 6 - made with Unity
http://www.simogo.com/blog/

 

Does the Unity Asset Store have such language in their agreement? I don't recall seeing it but if it is then I should edit my previous post and remove the sales figures. :/

 

The Helgason link didn't mean anything but there was a couple interesting ones on pixel prospector, mainly these four from 2013. Anything older than a couple years isn't really useful IMO because the trends shift so quickly.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/186940/defenders_quest_by_the_numbers_.php
http://techblog.orangepixel.net/2013/03/statistics-and-S***/
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Hugo...tic_sales_numbers_for_an_unknown_PC_title.php
http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures

What I like to look at is solid examples, so I liked the Dustforce one. I actually don't think success stories are worth looking at that much either. Hearing about someone get lucky isn't really much use. Its more useful to look at a more ordinary business model and see if you can extract any lessons from it.

 

If you are willing to pay for it, you can get revenue estimates for the top 100-ish iOS apps from companies like AppData or App Annie. I purchased a month of AppData a few months back, and it was eye opening. I cannot share that data (of course), but the top 100 apps are earning a lot of revenue (at least a lot of money to me).

The thing that must also be considered, however, is how much money is being spent on promotion. Most (if not all) of these apps are going through publishers that advertise and cross promote heavily. The problem small indie companies have is the lack of a (huge) marketing budget to push their app in the charts. I read somewhere recently that it costs about $1.80 to acquire a new player via advertising. If you can get into the top 10 or so there is a huge bump you get from being in the top 10 that lowers this cost significantly. But this level of marketing costs hundred of thousands to millions of dollars. If you can't get that chart bump, the cost to acquire a player may be more than that player's lifetime value.

So you may think that if you have a great app that gets featured and into the top 10, you are all set. You can then just re-invest your profits into marketing to stay in the top 10. Unfortunately, there appears to be a significant lag between getting into the top 10 and earning revenue.. at least if you are using IAP (if your game is not free and you are not an established brand there is basically zero chance of getting into the charts with a paid game these days). The lifetime value of a player may be greater than the initial $1.80 to acquire him, but it may take months for him to purchase his lifetime value amount (or to even find out if the lifetime value is worth it). Cash flow is then the killer.

So it is extremely difficult for us small indie game devs in the iOS app marketplace at the moment. I think there are two realistic options:

1. Work with a publisher.
2. Develop some kind of a niche game which can be successfully promoted outside of the standard app cross promo system.

I've opted for option 1. I've not released my game yet and I'm extremely bound by confidentiality agreements, but I promise to share what I can when I have some results

 

MooseMouse: realizing you're bound by confidentially, it'd still be interesting to hear some non-incriminating details of how you went about getting involved with a publisher. Was it like a portfolio of previous work, proof of concept for the game you want them to publish, plain old networking, all of the above etc.
Also, how did you pick a developer.. and do all the advantages come post release, or has it been helpful or hindering during development?

 

We have great Black Friday and excellent Cyber-Monday week for our non-gaming division.


For the next year, we have a solid budget for our game division.

 

I made 11 highly polished levels, created a Testflight build, and contacted a bunch of publishers. Mostly I was ignored or received polite "no thank you's", but I also got a half dozen interested publishers. I had a small portfolio of 3 previously completed games, but they were not well known or financially successful. I think the key, if you have no previous success to brag about, is to make a highly polished demo. hth

 

My story? I started small, with a 9 week project. And then a 16 week project. On and on, I have "tried, failed, learned, and repeated" five times. Until today, my niche apps have touched 140,000 lives. In my spare time, I earn an avg of ~$20 every day and most importantly, I've received 1300+ reviews, many of which, look like this: "The most important life-hack ever! Changed my life forever."

Whether that defines success or failure, is up to you.

Gigi

 

This particular post is about financial success but it's not the only way to measure success. Financially your game might bomb... but as an indie dev, I think the fact that you even finish a game (especially your first) is a huge success in and of itself. It's something that most indie devs never accomplish.

 

The biggest problem with the asset store (in my opinion) is that everything is priced ridiculously low. I'm not sure who decides the pricing, but I'm assuming it's the author.
This does two things: 1 - People feel as though they need to undercut competitors, 2 - People are discouraged from selling on the asset store because they're not sure it's worth their time (at least that's my feeling).

If the asset store is to improve, Unity needs to take control and bump up the pricing - prices should reflect the quality of the asset. Also, they should provide public sales statistics per item - not necessarily $, but number of downloads etc.

If we can get a lot more top-quality assets into the asset store, this will then drive adoption of Unity and would also increase productivity of game developers/designers.

 

My Krashlander iOS revenue since launch:

Here is the iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/krashlander/id506429660?mt=8

Shows what being featured can do.

That 2nd little blip was the result of going free for the weekend and back to paid.

 

I guess it's like the California gold rush, not much success to the gold panners, more success to the hardware, food, etc. sellers that followed the panners where they went.

 

@Jeff - how long was the dev cycle on Krashlander? That's a nice income. Fantastic Job!
Gigi

 

I'm just going to list people that I know personally working in the same city. This is Brisbane, Australia. It's a tiny city in a tiny country but I can still name the following successful Unity users -

http://www.thebinarymill.com/ - The Binary Mill
http://defiantdev.com/ - Defiant Development
http://www.witchbeam.com.au/ Witch Beam
http://5livesstudios.com/ 5 Lives Studios
http://www.screwtapestudios.com/blog/ Screwtape Studios
http://www.disparitygames.com/ Disparity Games (Us!)

These are all small studios ranging in size from 2 to 15 people all making a living with Unity. There's actually more successful Unity devs in Brisbane that I can't name off the top of my head. And this is just in one city.

I think Unity's doing fine.

 

I can name 3 more for you. Really is still a great place for game development despite the loss of the major game development companies in recent years.

http://www.banegames.com/ - Bane Games
http://ghostbox.net/ - GhostBox
http://www.geekbraingames.com/ - Geek Brain Games

I don't work for any of these. In time would love to add myself to Unity developers in Brisbane but still playing with it as current project not Unity based.

So agree Unity is doing fine.

 

According to one of the Unity blogs, 'some people' on the Asset Store are making up to $90 000 per month. Which I would wager is more than what 99% of devs are making on the app store. But that is probably one isolated case.

 

90 K was for the NGUI creator and it was on an isolated month. But for sure, for him it's a huge success story. Asset store is still a nice income for 10 % of the publishers ( making about 2 K per month ), happy to be in that 10%, allowing me to pay an expensive damn rent.

As for the game creation success story, if you have a solid and polished workable demo you can easily get answers from publishers. But even with a publisher you never know if your game will be a success story. Dealing with Chillingo right now for PROTOFACTOR's first game project. They seemed to dig the video captures I sent them and they're expecting an .apk for evaluation ... fingers crossed.

 

Good luck, I have a publisher interested in Monster Truck Racing Arenas too.. they are extremely fussy on which titles they publish though, but if I get a deal with them.. that is the big time

 

hope you'll get one to blow some big stream in your sails and sales. It's been such a while you're working on your project.

 

That $90,000 was just singular month, and it was NGUI guy if I am not mistaken. He is the top seller on Asset Store, now, if we compare that to the top seller on APP STORE, where they earned $12 MILLION A MONTH (CSR Racing by Natural Motion), it is pretty miniscule by comparison. And there are far more "millionaires" on App Store than on Asset Store. Come to think of it, are there ANY "millionaire" on Asset Store? I think not.

 

If I remember correctly CSR Racing is done in unity...That's the best example I can think of since it grossed $12 mill a month.

 

Haha, I was about to say something similar!

It is EXACTLY like the gold rush. The game market is like the gold mines waiting to be discover, and if someone discovered it - be it a new platform ie. iPhone, Android, or new genre eg. touch based slashing game, running game, 2D game...people are going to jump into the same pit wanting a share of the spoil.

I think this is the very reason why people are scare of sharing the sales data now. Mika Mobile was one of the biggest early success of Unity on the App Store with the Zombieville USA and Battleheart series, and they made the mistake talking about it - many people saw how simplistic Zombieville was - a 2D game in the age of 3D (a throw back), and probably thought - "hey I can do that, and do it better!" and next thing you know, there are hundreds if not thousands of "clones" on the app store all competing for the same market. The market becomes "diluted" and soon everyone complained about "only getting thousands of dollar out of it". The effect is even been felt on Unity - a 3D ENGINE being forced into a 2D engine - so much so that 2D BECAME THE SINGULAR MOST WANTED FEATURE OF UNITY because everyone wants to make a 2D mega-hit.

Sure, people are going to say "clones" will come regardless if you talk about your success or not, but if you talk about it openly, they will come sooner and in a torrent that will usually destroy your niche.

So, there are a lot more success stories on the App Store, but now people are just afraid to talk about it fearing the "rushers" coming to destroy their niche. It is kinda sad situation has become like this, people sharing information selflessly has their livelihood eroded instead of being rewarded.

 

LOL, you are right! I totally fogotten about CSR Racing was made in Unity (partially because I know Natural Motion themselves are a 3D engine company and I thought they would use their own engine)! I remember one of the developer talked about how they did the car reflection using cubemapping on this forum. So yeh, CSR Racing is definitely the "new" (since 2012) high watermark of Unity success story so far.

Come to think of it...12 million a month! That's exactly the amount Unity got from Series B venture capitalist funding. Makes you wonder why Unity didn't try to make commercial games themselves....