Why don't most indie developer share game revenue data?

I have asked my devs here and on other forums who have games on steam with positive reviews about how well their game performed but most stop responding. Does Steam have an NDA about revenue? I see that "Games Dev Unlocked" has made several videos bout their games performance.

I just wanted to see which types of indie games make money and what they did to achieve their success.

Even in other jobs, people are very secretive about what they earn. Is that normal human mentality?

 

This is to prevent unwanted rivality in the job.
I was in a job, where I have been paid pretty much for the same job probably around 20-30% more, than my colleague who was there longer. But we never shared data with each other. It is just educated guess after numerous months working together with other people and gathering relevant info.

So you see, someone may get upset, if certain data is officially shared.
You rather focus on the job and delivering.

 

I understand that in the case of colleagues but what about indie devs? I wanna make a turn based RPG and i saw some indie games on steam which are similar to my idea. Those devs are active on Unity/pixel crusher/ork framework forums and i PMed them about their game. They do answer any non financial questions but not even one has responded about sales data.

 

Nobody is going to give you this sort of business data for free. Market research (which is what you are talking about here) is often costly. There are cetainly ways to get reports on this sort of stuff, but you likely would pay a market reseach company to do it.

Alternatively there are industry yearly reports that compile tons of data but they cost a lot (like £2000 + for access).

There is simply no benefit to a company sharing this data with you without some sort of renumeration

Then ofcourse there is the old fashioned way of using the available stats (Steamspy, appannie etc) and making estimations, which is used more often than you would think. Have you done this yet? You can see a estimated range of users, and the original RRP, you can then make a calculation based on that to get a minimum and maximum revenue. You should try to factor in sales, refunds etc.

 

In Sweden that is public domain. You can check the revenue of any company

edit: big companies are good at evading tax. Here is DICE, they made 1.3 billion SEK last year
But they reported a profit of 100k SEK (only profit is taxable)

https://www.allabolag.se/5567106520/ea-digital-illusions-ce-ab

 

This is also true in the UK, companies house can be accessed online and all companies tax returns, annual filings etc

 

What happen to SteamSpy is disastrous to all indie developers.

And NDA mostly favor the employer.

 

Care to elaborate?

 

Not to discuss salery among employees is a sure way of lower saleries than a company were they do discuss

 

It's probably got to do with the fact that they spent 5 years pouring blood, sweat and tears into it, launched it thinking it would make millions, spent the next six months recovering from the fact that it only made a few thousand, finally convince themselves that revenue is not all that important as long as you're happy, and then they have someone asking how much revenue they made ..

A rough estimation is 40 * no. of steam reviews * price.

 

Simply market research, they knew what to expect a little now it is only stress and pray.

 

In a colleague setting it seems beneficial for everyone to know each others salaries, IF a company is large (say 100+ employees). It gives an advantage to the employee to negotiate better pay with the employer if you know what others of similar experience are getting paid.

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In response to OP, it is closely guarded info not just from indie devs. If public companies could keep financial data private they would do so as well. It is valuable information that can be used to make better decisions or avoid bad decisions. To do that research requires a lot of time, money, and experience, so nobody wants to give it for free.

 

So you're asking for the purpose of gathering data to create a competing product to theirs. Why would a business not want to provide information to a potential competitor? I have no idea

 

"beneficial for everyone" is subjective. For example, if you have everyone negotiating for better pay successfully, your efforts may inadvertently exceed the expenses the company can afford to pay employees, and a small number of employees may have to be let go to cover the pay increases for the rest. Was that "beneficial for everyone"? I don't know.

 

No it is not. It generates jealousy and concurrency. Like watching your neighbor having better car and bigger house, for doing less work for example. People can turn to be nasty very quick, knowing others financial status, specially if they are in very similar fields, or do not understands what involves.

Employer is expecting from candidates, to know right salary bracket, that shows them, how well you know specific field and reality. And as @Joe-Censored said, they want you to aim for lower salary. But if too low, they may perceive you as undervaluing yourself, which also may have negative impact.

 

The phrase "mind your own business" has become a boilerplate English expression for good reason.

 

This is literally S*** that bosses say to prevent employees from asking to get paid the same for the same amount of work. This "unwanted rivalry" thing is an ongoing myth that never holds true in cultures where wages are openly discussed.

 

That is not what I said. No boss have to say anything. People just don't talk about it openly to each other at work.

@Murgilod whats your current earnings and from each title you worked on. Willing to share that with us?

 

I believe in some countries salaries for a position are fixed.
This is related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_pay_for_equal_work

However, even in this situation people can receive different pay due to bonuses, and due to holding multiple jobs.

 

Yeah basically this is why websites such as https://www.levels.fyi/ exist

If you know the details about how much people in the same level / experience are getting paid, you can negotiate the best deal for yourself. Without this knowledge then it's much more difficult to gauge what is a good offer.

On the flip side, if you find out you are being paid less than your peers at the company, you will be motivated to ask for a raise or look for a job that will pay you at the rate you should get.

For example, in the Bay Area if they offer you $200,000/yr as an engineer with 5 years experience it may sound great but then you check and see your peers earn $300,000/yr you will negotiate or find a different offer. How else can you know?

 

Sure, I can give some rough estimates for things where I'm at liberty to disclose.

Right now I have a game on itch and steam sitting at a whopping < $500 revenue between the two, with Steam making up all but a single sale ($5 USD title). My second game is much more successful, sitting at, hold on to your butts...

About $600 between Steam and itch, with zero itch sales.

The bulk of the titles I've worked on have been for contract work, either for assisting with the hiring/onboard process, some general C# and Rust dev, but most of my money comes from shader work. Since I'm working with small adult indies, I tend to work on a sliding scale. Sometimes I draft up a contract where I'm working for minimum wage based on a rough estimate of how many hours the job will take.

So, on the coding front, I've worked for as little as $45 for a job, but generally speaking I start my rates valuing myself at an approximated $30 per hour, which puts me in a pretty competitive market position.

Would you like to know more? The reason I don't list titles is for the sake of anonymity, but if you want I can give more details on what I earn, save for S*** like my tax returns.

 

The practical challenge is that you may need to overpay someone in order to fill a specific role due to short-term market factors (for example some other companies big project just gobbled up all the expertise, or if its just before bonus time so no one wants to leave their current roles).

But if you really need to fill a role, you might end up hiring Joe Average doing Job X on your payroll for 150k. Maybe shortly after the market returns to normal and you hire 3 more people for Job X at 130k. Understandably these new people might be a a little frustrated that Joe Average gets paid more than them when they do a comparable or maybe even better job.

The complicating factor is that typically large employers can't easily reduce someones salary (and in some places this is legislated). So we can't just reduce Joe's salary to match everyone elses, and paying everyone much more than market rates as a matter of course is probably not going to be practical for most businesses.

To be clear I don't think people should be prevented from talking about their salaries, I've always ignored such rules, but I understand why some companies discourage it.

 

No, thats fine. I am completely cool with that
Thx for sharing.

 

I'm a firm believer in putting my money where my mouth is. I absolutely think that sharing wage information does nothing but benefit everyone and help put things on a level field. My economic politics run distinctly against capitalism but in a capitalist system, people benefit greatly from knowing the playing field they're on, and sharing wages does exactly that. If two people have five years experience and one is making $150k and the other is making $175k, the boss better have a damn good reason for doing it, and the only way that can be found out is if that conversation exists in the first place.

Are they making that extra $25k because they're the boss's nephew? Or have they consistently brought something to the table that makes them specifically worth that? One is a reason that can be an encouragement, but the other is because they're the boss's nephew.

Nephew is just an example. Through evaluating these things, you can find out a lot about what's happening in a workspace and fix loads of efficiency and productivity issues. You want your reasons? A level playing field benefits everyone, including the most talented.

 

I haven't been an employee in that sense for many years now, but last time I was we were very open between colleagues what we had. It didn't create one bit of rivalry or jealousy.

The junior guys looked up to us seniors and saw us as mentors and our salery as a base line for what they could ask

 

I think the challenge is when the seniors have very different salaries. Sometimes people with the same skill set, same ability level and same tenure will have different salaries and that can cause issues.

I remember finding out I was being paid around 10% less than someone who reported to me (and considered me a mentor). I joined the company in its early stages, and the the other guy joined much later when both the company and the market was hot, but I still found it a little off-putting. Fortunately I only found out after I had left for a position which paid a lot more

 

And if you were sticking around, you could have just said "hey, I'm practically this guy's supervisor, why is he getting more than me?"

If the person paying you can't explain that, then you've got leverage. If you don't have a baseline to judge your value to a company, how can you ever hope to negotiate anything? Saying you shouldn't talk to people about your salary is like saying you should go hiking without a phone and compass. The only thing you're doing is putting yourself at a severe disadvantage when you hold on to this.

 

I'm not disagreeing, I just wanted to point out as a counterpoint to @MDADigital's experience that it:
a) happens and
b) at least some people (or one in this case) find it frustrating

 

I don't think that is wise. A boss will never listen to a argument that is only based on that you should make more than some other guy. Instead sell your skills and why you should be paid more.

 

Sure but knowing what the other dude makes opens a possibility todo something about it. If you didn't discuss salery among your collgues you might be content with what you had

Again don't use the other guys salery as argument.

 

A guy with great skill does not necessarily have skills to sell them.

 

Absolutely not. If you're a senior member of staff and your junior, who you are mentoring, is paid more than you? You've already got full hand. Pay is a fantastic leverage point in that situation. 10% is a significant amount of money to be missing out on, that has to be justified.

 

The world is not so black and white. When you are negotiating you should use what ever levers possible, and some levers will work for some people and situations, and not for others. I've been responsible for handling salary for many people, and if a good employee said to me:

"Look I heard on the grapevine that we are paying $XX for new hires in the same role as me, I think I deserve a pay rise to bring my salary in line with the market and others in the company"

Then I would probably do everything in my power to make it happen (if I wasn't already pushing for it).

 

I still think its better to bring up why you should have those 10 procent.

Also I want to mention that there are alot of juniors that are better than alot of tired old seniors. Seniority does not only come from years

 

The entire gaming industry in fact, alot lower salary in gaming than in enterprise

 

What is better? In this context the thing that gets you more money I would say.

More to the point a "skill" is pretty tricky thing to attach a value to unless your role can be directly tied to dollars, like a sales role. How do you value skills? If you say you use the market, then thats really no different from using other employees as a baseline.

 

You can mention that all you want, but it doesn't match up with the rest of the description of the situation.

This is exactly the sort of thing that seniority bonuses and contract negotiations are built around, and the only way to enter into those negotiations prepared is to have all the information. This includes information about other peoples wages, which was a bargaining chip that had previously not been available. Pay attention to the entire situation described, including the context of not normally having pay information like that.

 

Compare yourself to that other guy, what are you doing better than him that brings value to the company? Bring that up.

 

So you ARE baselining against the other guy.

 

Offcourse.

 

Hiding salary is a tool used by employers to underpay some staff, but it also enables them to attract needed talent by paying more than the average earner in the company for a role that needs to be filled desperately, even if the company already has some people doing the same role.

Bottom line:
Some employers suck, others don't.
Know your worth.
Fight for it.

In more established industries there are more levels than 'junior' and 'senior', like junior level 1, 2, 3, 4. manager 1, 2, 3, 4. etc. They define a salary band that an employee must be paid if they are at a specific level, this way no one knows exact amounts but they have a rough idea that no one is being exploited. Some of these companies also define clear personal development goals for employees to progress up the levels. - Personally, i like this system and plan to use it one day.

Why developers don't disclose their earnings for games, there'll be a number of reasons for that. Here's a few I can think of off the top of my head.

- Staff may complain they aren't getting a big enough cut of the money.
- Staff may see that their studio isn't earning enough to stay afloat may worry about job security and look to leave.
- Investors may want to keep figures tight to their chest in case acquisition negotiations arise.
- Stop distant relatives and old friends coming back into your life and asking you for money
- There are no earnings to disclose, oh the shame!
- People have it beaten into them all their life not to tell people what they earn for reasons laid out above. This is engrained culturally and makes people uncomfortable doing it.

 

Well I don't think any of us are disagreeing then. Certainly my point wasn't that the negotiation should in its entirety consist of one point: "You pay X more than me for the same role, pay me as much as X *STOMPS FOOT*"

It is however a nice kicking off point to establish a baseline value from which you can make the arguments around skill sets, relative value, etc.

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Back to Indie devs. In my experience Indie devs are much more likely to share financial data than other private companies. It's pretty much unheard of for a retail store to share its sales data with another competing retail store for example, yet there are countless examples of Indie devs sharing sales and revenue data.

Other than that see points that @Antony-Blackett made

 

Retail stores and other such companies are generally publicly listed companies and are required to follow reporting compliance processes of the stock exchange they are listed on and the country they are in. They share their financial statements in this process, including sales data.

But you're right, private companies don't, and I can only guess that it's to keep their negotiation position strong if another investor wanted to join the party.

 

I like the Swedish model here (and the british apperently) that company revenue is public domain. I can even request a individuals yearly salary since this is public domain, though he will get a notification that I did a check on him.

Edit: maybe public record is a better term

 

There are plenty of private retail stores, obviously not your big chains, but pretty much everyone else.

 

Really, salary is public record? That seems very odd to me!

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UK seems to have some new laws around private company disclosures:

Many UK private companies (and unlisted public companies) must include additional information in their 2020 annual reports because of new company law that applies to them for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2019
.
https://www.ashurst.com/en/news-and...orting-requirements-for-uk-private-companies/​

However its certainly not going to apply to your average "mum and pop" milk bar, botique clothing store or 2 man indie dev team. The thresholds are 250 employees and 36 million pounds in turn over.

 

Yepp, salary is a public record. Capital gain, dividend etc isn't though

Edit: here it very much includes two man indie teams. Our company is public for anyone review

 

Proved

 

"A rough estimation is 40 * no. of steam reviews * price."
-Yes, i did use this metric. I also checked SteamDB for relevant data.

"So you're asking for the purpose of gathering data to create a competing product to theirs. Why would a business not want to provide information to a potential competitor? I have no idea "
-Their games were 4-5 years old, probably not gonna have any more sales. And i dont think of indie devs as competitors but rather companions.

"Nobody is going to give you this sort of business data for free. Market research (which is what you are talking about here) is often costly. There are cetainly ways to get reports on this sort of stuff, but you likely would pay a market reseach company to do it."
-Indie devs dont pay for market research.

"There is simply no benefit to a company sharing this data with you without some sort of renumeration"
-How about the knowledge that you helped a fellow indie? isnt that the only thing we get when we help others on this forum?

 

I just want to chime in that while I generally agree with Murgilod that discouraging salary discussion can allow a business to better exploit workers, it can also as already mentioned mitigate jealousy and team dysfunction.

In the ~3 years I've been working for a company I've gotten a number of impromptu (not end-of-the-year) bonuses due to a customer's effusive praise. These weren't discussed publicly because it could easily create jealousy from others in other positions (either their customers don't communicate their satisfaction or the employees just aren't working as hard as I do). In this case it's to both my and the other employees' benefit, and also possibly the employer's as well. Think of that kid in college who ruined the curve for example, everybody hates them.

And also, as Antony-Blackett indicated, we have a tier system from 1-5/6 and documents listing the expectations for each tier. little over a year ago I wound up getting a promotion, but before I knew about it I sat down with the chart and wrote out a document, arguing that I was fulfilling the qualifications for the next tier. So it was a benefit there.