Category Archives: General

Content not bound by a common subject

Lessons after 8 years as indie developer

January 26, 2024 marked eight years since the moment I’ve left my job and decided to work for myself. At the moment of writing this, Coldwild Games, the company I’ve founded, company consisted of seven people. You can find my last year’s summary here.

A tough year

It’s been a tough year expense-wise. Expenses were way higher than income and it took a few miracles to get this far. Big thanks to our previous games that helped us stay afloat.

Am I tired of games?

At one point, I started having an identity crisis. I’ve been running the studio for 8 years and developing games for more than that. I noticed that I don’t enjoy playing games as much, except for very rare exceptions. Does it make sense to make games with an attitude like that? Should I just treat it as a business and milk it entirely? In the end, I got diagnosed with depression and after a treatment course, things are starting to look up again. I don’t really doubt that I want to have my life devoted to making games, I just want to figure out the extent of how invested I am going to be in this.

I definitely became much less social and outgoing. Running a business, with its successes and failures, affects all spheres of my life.

My own personal goal does not change: I still want Coldwild Games to be an umbrella of talent; so that no one would need to leave Latvia if they want to make indie non-mobile games. I don’t have any vision or drive for the new games; it does not mean that I don’t care. I want games to be part of culture and I want to place my country on the map as an indie hub.

Stories from the Outbreak results

For almost two and a half years we were working on a zombie roguelite game called “Stories from the Outbreak.” It’s about a group of survivors trying to leave Riga, a capital city of Latvia, and reach the ferry heading out to North Sea. This is the highest quality game we’ve made.

Fighting zombies on the city streets

The launch has been a flop. I got overconfident and decided to do the game I wanted despite getting mixed signals. We had ~20k wishlists on early access launch and close to 30000 wishlists for full release, but it still was not enough to sell at least 5000 copies total up to date.

Some valuable lessons for myself:

  • Stick to one year projects
  • Stick to wholesome / cozy games
  • Don’t expand unless you are confident that you are going to get twofold returns; small studios can’t afford getting employees to fill specific roles, you need to become a generalist of sorts
  • Porting games to consoles helps

Belarus Simulator

I published my story on how valve decided to stonewall my anti-war game and simply ghost me. It did not get a lot of traction, but I’ve been getting private messages on how ridiculous that is. In short, my idealistic side definitely got a hit. In my opinion, Valve is there for transactional relationships with the devs and they will tolerate you as long as you make them money and not put them at risk, even if you are not doing anything illegal. It’s no longer a company that I look up to, more like a business thing that I need to get my games out there. It definitely influenced my game-making drive for the worse though.

Studio Expansion

When we had 2 good projects in a row, expanding the studio felt like a good idea. The studio went from 3 employees in late-2020 to 7 employees by late 2021. We always wanted to create bigger games so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to start doing that. Unfortunately, I did not read the market correctly and taking Stories from the Outbreak off the ground turned out to be a challenge, despite everyone doing their best.

It’s a major financial loss for the company, but ultimately I’m glad that I decided to give it a try: I always wanted to make larger scale games. It’s just my dreams and expectations from the process did not match reality. Managing the team that makes games is not the same as making games.

I think a lot of bigger developers fell into the same trap. The industry can’t just expand indefinitely: having bigger teams adds so much pressure into making successful games and it’s not always possible. I think it would make sense for experienced studios to budget for 3-5 games and expect 3 flops, one break-even and one success.

What’s next?

We’re not closing down, but we are going to stick to smaller projects. Non-combat, wholesome games are going to return as a main focus. We are renewing our search for freelance jobs, mainly pixel art. Check out our portfolio of latest games if you want to hire a pixel artist:

Despite not having better news, I don’t intend to give up. I’ll see you next year!

Belarus Simulator

How Valve blocked my anti-war game

When the war in Ukraine started, I’ve spent some time making a game reflecting on absurdity of propaganda. After spending $100 on the usual submission fee, Valve decided to stonewall my game, Belarus Simulator, behind their review process, without any deadlines or reasonable communication.

The Background

As a russian-speaking citizen of Latvia (one out of three Baltic states that share a border with Russian federation), I looked critically  at what is happening at our big neighbor’s territory when it came to internal politics and political repressions, but I never perceived it as an external military threat to Europe, not even after  the events happening in Crimea in 2014. Of course, that all changed on February 24, 2022. Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine left everyone here wondering: “what if we are next” and “would NATO risk a full-scale confrontation over a small country.” The crimes that were happening in Bucha and Irpen were especially painful to observe because in Latvia the similar atrocities have been done by the soviets in 1940, when the occupation by the Soviet Union has started.

Dealing with it

After working some shifts in Ukrainian refugee centre and seeing all the victims of this unprovoked war, my sorrow was accumulating day by day. The normality of life that was there is no longer possible. My feelings aside, I had no idea how refugees from Ukraine manage in this heartbreaking situation.

One way to deal with my internal crises in Life has always been game development. Therefore it took me a week to make the baseline of  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1990760/Belarus_Simulator_Preemptive_Strike/ – my take on what was going on and how the system of intricate lies and compromising brought us to where we are today.

Capsule image from Belarus Simulator, short for B.S.

The game follows a simple formula: what if everything that propaganda tells us is true? Would the illusion shatter naturally? If so – when? It does not feature the war itself (unlike Death from Above – a Ukrainian drone operator simulator which did not meet any resistance when being published).

Screenshot from the game management screen

Belarus Simulator features a simple management system with new perceived threats appearing as time goes by. The player has to use the resource allocation via sliders in order to be dealing with them. The game features my terrible hand-drawn graphics and rather simple resource management mechanics.

What happened afterwards was a Kafkaesque system of stonewalling by Valve, devoid of any observable logic.

The Process

The first hurdle was during the page approval process: before approving the page, I was asked to provide a playable copy of the game. This has never happened for any other games that I’ve made. A few days later, the page actually have gone live. This is when the problems with the review process started.

The usual build review did not happen: instead, it was replaced by this message.

Extra review steps?

Clicking on “here” started a usual support ticket: after trying to actually ask what was going on and getting vague replies, the support ticket eventually disappeared. The link now leads to a closed support ticket. There is no way the game can be reviewed. It has been like that since August 2022.

You want to actually view and respond to review feedback? That’s too bad

What surprised me the most is not the fact that Valve does not want to see something like that at their store. It’s the different thing: they essentially stonewalled and ignored me. Rather than saying “no, we don’t want this” privately, they kept ghosting me and not answering both my emails and support tickets at all. My requests for a brief call (in case they did not want to put rejection in writing) were dismissed. The ignoring happened with at least 3 new support requests that I’ve kept opening every 3 months or so.

Any other ways?

I’ve reached out to three people at Valve personally: my main company Steam rep, an employee that I’ve met at GDC in 2019 and Gabe Newell. I got a brief response from my steam rep essentially saying “I can’t the influence review process, if you don’t like it – we can remove the page entirely.” Afterwards he started ghosting me. Everyone else avoided answering me entirely.

Reply 1

My Reply, no reply followed
My follow-up
Reply 2, which is a copy of reply 1 with an added paragraph of “we can remove it if you don’t like it”

After this, I could not get any new replies, no matter how much I asked:

One of many follow-ups that I’ve sent

In the end, none of my emails got answered.

Why am I writing this?

Most of the time, I’ve been feeling unsafe: I can’t really go public with this because Valve can easily close my accounts as a silent means of retaliation (both my shitposting account and my main company account – even if I run both of them as separate entities). Still, I don’t think I did anything wrong. If anything, I should be angry at the system that ignores me and allows this to drag for more than 1.5 years.

Even if you look at this practically: imagine you’ve ordered a package from Amazon and paid $100 for it. It does not arrive – what would you do? Now imagine that support keeps stonewalling you and plainly ignoring your messages after you’ve paid the $100 store submission fee.

Knowing that Valve did not release a statement even during the George Floyd and BLM protests, I never expected them to pick a side here too. What I _did_ expect is to not be blocked by trying to voice _my_ protest to Russian aggression and help gather some donation money while doing it. Realistically speaking, the game would have been played by 5 people tops, so I don’t understand why they stonewalled it behind the “review process” that allegedly lasts for 1.5 years. Meanwhile, games like Angry Putin apparently get published without any obstacles.

What’s Next?

I’ve completely lost my will to make the games for some time, but I have been recovering gradually. I’m not sure which was more painful to me: the fact that my game won’t get published or that the company that I looked up since I was a child essentially threw away our 7 years of relationship and decided to ghost me. You can say that corporations are not people, but I always found it as a cheap excuse: behind every screen there is a living person. Valve has the power to change the world. You can say that this is not their responsibility to do so. I’d say that this is _everyone’s_ responsibility. But in any case: even by doing nothing, Valve is picking their side.


The war in Ukraine is far from over. Please consider donating if you can.

Lessons and statistics after seven years as an indie developer

January 26, 2023 marks seven years since the moment I’ve left my job and decided to work for myself. At the moment of writing this, the company consists of eight people. You can find my last year’s summary here.

The Data

Luna’s Fishing Garden has broken even in March 2022 and started turning in profit. Merchant of the Skies sales has decreased and dropped under sustainability range for the studio of this employee amount.

Expenses have been larger than income in 2022

We’ve released Lazy Galaxy 2 in March 2022 (broken even and started bringing in profit) and Crown of Pain in Early Access (published by us, made by another Indie developer from Latvia; still in development) – but no major releases means that we essentially had to live from our savings.

I’ve started providing contracting services both from the studio (allowing developers I know take on small tasks) and by myself occasionally: but it’s not the main part of studio income.

Income from our own games vs income from freelance

Stories from the Outbreak

Most of the year has been spent working on Stories from the Outbreak by all members of our team. This is closest I’ve been to dabbling with how “big studios” do things: the project has been in development for roughly 1.5 years (ready to be released on Mar 31) and had 10+ people working on it at some points.

When it comes to production quality and gameplay balance: this is going to be our best game so far.

I could not do as much programming as I used to do before, because I assumed the role of the producer, making sure the tasks are properly set and the team has everything they need in order to complete the game.

It’s both exciting and terrifying to work on something for so long without knowing the possible results. We’ve agreed that this is our attempt to do something bigger than we usually do: try to see if we can make a big, expandable game with world lore and vast potential for content updates and additions.

Studio Plans

The thing that would make sense business wise would be to keep making peaceful/wholesome games. We are going to do that later. For now, I’m very happy that we decided to take a risk and see if we can challenge ourselves to make something that we wouldn’t typically make. This is also our attempted step away from the usual aesthetics-first formula: don’t get me wrong, Elena and Zane are doing a great job making art for the game, but this is the first time in a while when the main driving force behind the game was the focus on great gameplay, supported by great art, and not the other way around. Whether this works out or not is a separate question.

Being a head of the studio

Crown of Pain, one of the games we’ve published

My thoughts are still the same as last year. Leading the studio requires consistency which I’m not always capable of, so I have to force myself to do things quite often, essentially making it similar to the office job. I have my day scheduled via calendar, but I often feel like I’m going against who I am. Discipline matters, but at one point I do wonder if I’d be better off making games for a few weeks, then taking longer rests to recover: it’s not really an option when you have people depend on you. I’m still observing how I feel and what (if anything) should be done about this.

ADHD

I got my ADHD diagnosis in March, 2022. It’s almost impossible to do so in Latvia: adults don’t get it and one of the two psychiatrists I’ve been to told me “it’s a made up thing so that wallstreet bankers can get meth”. I got lucky for finding a neurologist that took my issues seriously. I remember being moody / easily upset / anxious most of life, but treated it as a given and learned to suppress it over the years in order to fit in better.

Getting evaluated and having prescribed stabilizing medicine makes a difference. I’ve been able to regulate my emotions better and my quality of life has improved. I’m able to concentrate on my work and handle the business much better, I attended a first few concerts in my life, can form deeper connections with people because I can concentrate on the conversations (well, most of the time), I can actually stay in galleries and observe the paintings patiently and I can deal with anxiety being around people and in the loud events now. I can take more risks because making a mistake does not drive your guilt level to “I’m committing the worst crime ever” when you don’t even do something bad. My sleep has greatly improved. Overall, it happened with a lot of pain and grief from understanding what I’ve missed in my previous years of life, but also with a lot of hope to what comes next (maybe I should make a game about it ?).

You can read more about ADHD here. This book is pretty useful if you want to understand whether this is an issue for you and whether you should get serious about being diagnosed.

If anything: treat your mental health seriously.

What is Coldwild Games about?

Some time ago, I’ve read this piece by Douglas Rushkoff. It resonated with me and it explains something that I’ve been wondering about since my early twenties:

More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where “winning” means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way.

This is why Coldwild Games gives 30%+ game profits to creators and employees who worked on our games. If the year was profitable, I take out roughly 5-10% as dividends. If we ever make a mega hit, I don’t think it would make sense to get the money for me alone: it’s not a huge corporation, every member of the team made it possible for the game to succeed. Why should I be the only one who reaps benefits of success?

Stories from the Outbreak

To me, owning a company means building a sense of home. I think this is what many people do not fully comprehend: to make something feel like home, you need to invest in it. It makes sense to support the society and environment around you. This is your long-term investment into building a place you call home. It does not make sense to become rich when hardworking people around you are struggling to make ends meet.

Due to Russian aggression in Ukraine and both internal and external issues appearing: whether Latvia is going to be that home and whether this model is sustainable – only time will tell. I know I’ll be happy making games alone, but ultimately it’s very rewarding to do it among insanely talented and caring individuals.

Till next year.

Lessons and statistics after six years as an indie developer

On January 26th, 2022, my sixth year of running the indie game development studio, Coldwild Games, is over. The company expanded from 3 to 7 people, published one game in full release and one – in early access and is expecting a year of growth ahead.

Since there has been quite a number of things happening, I don’t expect you to know / remember anything. I’ve added links for context.

Peaceful Games

After the release of Merchant of the Skies in 2020, we wanted to keep working on peaceful games. We’ve made Luna’s Fishing Garden by collaborating with illufinch and other contractors.

Merchant of the Skies sold close to 70000 copies across all platforms and is doing well. Luna’s fishing garden has sold around 16000 copies across all platforms and has not broken even yet, but it’s going to within the next six more months, by my conservative estimates. In the end, I’m just happy that we managed to make a game with 95%+ overwhelmingly positive rating.

While we are not working on peaceful/wholesome games currently, we still have them in mind when planning for our future.

Other games

Lazy Galaxy 2 is one of the games scheduled for release in Q1 2022. With roughly 3000 copies sold, it is currently a net loss, but it’s been gathering wishlists during its early access phase and we are planning to do extra marketing effort for full release. The team is still super enthusiastic about it and we are nearing the final sprint towards the release.

Coldwild Games is also publishing Crown of Pain, an attempt to enter the gamedev scene by a local Latvian developer, Jagit Games. It’s an experimental match 3 RPG game in darker atmosphere. The development took longer than expected, but I’m OK with it and I am happy with what we are getting as the result.

Both of the games are relatively small, but have a lot of heart in it and made me ponder what am I looking for when publishing games.

Data

Yearly income/expense ratio below. Overall, the income has not been as high as before, but still higher than expenses. A significant part of the expenses is related to royalties. This is going to be the case will most of the projects that go beyond breakeven.

Realistically, the chart puts us in a danger zone for this year, but there are still enough savings and passive income, even if we make zero games, which is not going to be the case (hopefully).

Being a head of the studio

Running a 7 people team + contractors is not the same as running a 3 people team. I’m filling more of a producer / business developer role now, but my feelings are mixed on this.

I love the team and every person on it. Honestly, we all work from home, but occasionally meeting every one of them is like a small celebration to me. I love spending time and talking to them. They are all skilled and driven, and I consider this to be the biggest treasure of expanding Coldwild Games.

I am closely monitoring how I feel and if I don’t adapt to the CEO role well enough – I’ll probably be looking for a different head of the company while focusing on the art. Honestly, I’m fairly sure that the company is going to reach the yearly revenue of $1m eventually, but I don’t think this matters since I’ve been doing this for my own satisfaction / feeling. If someone would say “Vladimir, let me buy the company for $1m” – I’d say no to this just a year ago, but now I’d think hard on this offer.

Ideally I see Coldwild Games as a collective of artists who do what they like, but I’m not sure how realistic this is. I would rather think of myself as one of the employees, rather than the boss, but it’s not entirely possible in the environment when I have to take responsibility for the business income and further plans. Larger part of the latest game income ownership is still held by employees, but in order to create new games, a common vision is necessary. People are often interested in making different things which puts these two statements in conflict. I’ve still not given up on this and looking into ways of making this work.

Existential Crisis

I think realization that I’m in my thirties only hit me in 2021. As a way of coping with this, I’ve published my own short interactive story called Late Bird. It’s an experimental piece about birds, movies, suicidal thoughts and not growing up in time where I tried to process my own feelings and the search for the meaning of life.

I don’t really consider myself as an artist, but if I ever made something close to an art by myself – it is this.

What’s Next

Right now I’m trying to establish a routine that I enjoy. I thought that I can handle running two projects at the same time, but 2021 proved me wrong 🙂 After an internal studio discussion, we’ve decided to consolidate our efforts and work on one, bigger thing. Sure, it is riskier. But it also allows us to make something bigger and focus on one thing. What is that thing? The time will tell.
Till we meet again in a year.

Why am I doing this

When I started developing games, I thought that it’s going to be fun and I’m going to enjoy it. Well, the last two weeks of February have been anything but fun. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that these weeks have been the worst weeks of my professional life.

It all started when I posted the ad for the writing position on Feb 11. The conditions were simple:

  • We need a writer for Luna’s Fishing Garden, our next game
  • Someone with a published game
  • We’ll do a paid test for the writers that we like
  • I’m going to respond to everyone who applied via email twice: once to acknowledge the application (unless they applied really close to deadline) and once to let them know about the final choice

I knew we’d get some traction and I certainly wanted to have some choice. I knew I’d have to turn down people eventually. I did not expect that many. I counted the applications and we got over 70 over the course of two weeks.

Well, I realized that picking a candidate is anything but fun. I mean I do love the final result, but the process has been agonizing. It showed me that:

  • I have very little idea about good video game writing. Imagine you had to pick a nuclear scientist for your project while knowing only basics about nuclear science. “Can you create a nuclear thingy that works great please?” Yes, I know the monomyth and three act structure. No, I don’t know what makes dialogues good and how much control a writer should exercise over the game plot.
  • Paid tasks are a double-edged sword
  • I might not have the right mindset to turning people down

What’s wrong?

Imagine that you need to determine whether a person is a good fit for a project. If you spend quarter of an hour for that (I think a very moderate amount of time) – that would be almost 18 hours for 70 people. I quickly realized that I can’t do it this way.

Choice paralysis is a thing: what if I am missing a candidate that is a great fit because I’m only giving a brief overview? Can I reject someone because of a poorly written resume? What if I am judging a book by its cover and missing the ideal person for the job?

It took me roughly 40 hours to go through all the candidates and more than 6 hours to write replies. This does not include the correspondence with shortlisted candidates. I am confident that we ultimately picked the best person for the job, but even if we did not: it’s not a pass/fail thing, it’s more of a spectrum and someone can still be capable of doing the job despite not being an objectively best candidate.

Paid Tests

While I think that assignments should be paid and this is how things are going to happen in Coldwild Games while I’m in charge, I realize that it does make the whole thing quite complicated.

I have a very limited budget to pick ~4 people for a paid test. I think this inherently favors more experienced writers: if someone has a strong track record, I am more inclined to pay for the test. At the same time, it would feel wrong to ask the beginner to do a test for free.

But what if, hypothetically, I am missing the best candidate again? I can see why some richer companies ask people do the tests for free (even though they can probably pay every person who applies). With huge influx of candidates, you might miss some eager writer without a solid track record, who’d still do a great job. No way you’d pay them for the test as this seems too risky.

Another part of the process is contracting/bureaucracy: signing the paid test contract for small amounts of money just seems like an overkill (that still need to happen for accounting purposes).

All in all, this is not an open-and-shut case so I can understand the companies that might be asking everyone to submit a few pages of work for free, even though I do not condone it personally.

The “Why”

More than anything, it made me think why am I going through this sort of discomfort. My office job was quite cozy and paid more. So why am I willingly going? It seriously triggered an existential crisis and the question that I’ve been trying to answer myself over two weeks.

Ultimately, I know the answer: I just want to make good games. I know Luna’s Fishing Garden would be passable with as-is writing. But the whole point why I’m in this is that I don’t want to have just passable works in the studio portfolio.

Thanks to everyone who applied and I’m sorry I had to turn most of you down.

Lessons and statistics after five years as an indie developer

My fifth year of running the indie game development studio is behind me. On January 26th 2021, Coldwild Games has turned five. Did I hope I’d get this far? Yes. Did I think we’d get this far? At times, if I am being realistic and honest, no. In this post, I am going to share this year’s personal discoveries and lessons learned.

If you want to compare it to previous year, here’s my fourth year summary

Finding Your Niche

Merchant of the Skies, art by Elena Nazarenko

Our biggest event of 2020 was out-of-early-access release of our game, Merchant of the Skies. Up until now, we’ve sold around 50000 copies on all platforms. I think 2020 encouraged me to keep working on peaceful games. I am not going to avoid games with combat entirely, but for now I really enjoy coming up with ways to make non-violent games fun. If anything, 2019 and 2020 has proven to me that there definitely are audiences who are OK with the lack of combat.

I think Merchant of the Skies has been a success mostly because of the amazing art by Elena Nazarenko ( https://twitter.com/ElenaNazaire ). That made me prioritize aesthetics-first approach for some of our next games.

Data

Here are some stats from previous years.

Expenses vs Income

The income in 2020 was greater than 4 previous years combined. The same goes for expenses.

Regarding income: Merchant of the Skies had a good early access graduation and console launch only strengthened it further.

Regarding expenses: first, the studio expanded a bit. But also the current company policy is to give creators / long-term contractors a profit share of the game they are working on. The usual % that someone gets now is at least 10% of the game profits, in addition to the salaries / contractor payment. Of course, as studio expands, this ratio is probably going to go lower, but I share around 30% of every project’s profits with people who helped to create it.

This approach does have drawbacks: since studio savings grow in a notably slower manner, each project is way riskier.

Income by source

2020 was the first year where we could stop freelancing entirely and just work on our own stuff. Trust me, it feels good and I am very lucky to be here. But it adds a new level of challenge: once you reach a status quo, you get extra stress from trying to maintain it.

The studio has grown in size. As of now, we are currently working with 4 contractors and three full-time employees (that number includes me). The plan right now is to not go crazy with expansion, but rather take it slow and ramp up the development progressively.

The GDC Talk

Despite GDC on-site event being cancelled, I managed to give a talk remotely. Not as cool as being in San Francisco, but still a personal milestone in my book 🙂

My talk, “Choosing Your Art Before Making a Game” is a summary of my aesthetic-driven development approach. It shows what I’ve learned and how we approached the development on Merchant of the Skies by putting the art first and marketing as early as possible.

We got lucky?

Merchant of the Skies leaving early access resulted in higher income than the early access launch itself (quite a rare occurrence, judging from what I’ve heard from other developments).

Nonetheless, each one of our games except for the first one essentially broke even at the very least. Make no mistake: this is mostly because of low expenses running a studio. My current net studio salary is under $1200/month (still a very decent amount for Latvia, but way less than usual sofware engineering jobs are paying way more). I am far from being a millionaire, even with a relatively successful game.

As it stands now, we have a chance to make two more games at the very least. Why am I not running around and pitching the studio everywhere? Because I want to make sure that we can consistently create good games that can comfortably sustain us.

Lazy Galaxy: Rebel Story, one of our previous games

What’s Next

I want to have a studio that works on 2 projects at the same time to reduce the risks. As I distance myself from programming and going more towards the management / planning role, I began to understand that I want to have a studio that is centered on the people, their personalities and individual growth. I can make games, but I also like seeing people grow creatively and take responsibility for their work. I want to have a crunch-free place (maybe except for one week of paid crunch before and during the _actual_ release because it’s impossible to work 8 hours only when you constantly need to reply to player feedback and adjust stuff). Work-life balance has been a priority of late 2020 and early 2021 and we plan to continue being that way.

Luna’s Fishing Garden, our next peaceful game

Ideally, I’d like Coldwild Games to be an alliance of small in-house studios and creators, each working on their own unique ideas, rather than the studio that works something big. I’d rather support talented people working on what they like rather than force my own views all the time. I can’t completely do this yet, but I might be able to later. If you are running an indie operation and like developing games, but want to meet someone who could potentially handle your production process / marketing and publishing help – drop me an email, I’d love to talk. I don’t just want to publish games and bail, I want to follow the people along their way, with both successes and failures.

These 5 years have been a real adventure. I still enjoy making games very much and I hope that I will get to continue doing it. Thanks to amazing people who worked on our games with us and our community of friends, who supported us along the way. I hope for many more years of working together.

Lessons and statistics after four years as an indie developer

On January 26th, my company became exactly 4 years old. As a brewing tradition, I’m publishing my yearly reports and experiences about being an indie game developer. Last year’s post is here. I’m going to go through the year’s event and just summarize the things that I’ve learned.

Aesthetics first” approach

We started development of “Merchant of the Skies” by figuring out the graphic style and it worked out really well for us. I think aesthetics help to sell games, but good gameplay makes people stay. You can probably make a decently-successful game with only one of these two, but the real trouble will be to keep traction.

For the next games that we make, we are going to try finding out the style first and tuning the gameplay later. Basically the process would go:

Theme → Style → Gameplay

Game designer Adam Mayes visited the Latvian Gamedev Conference in (I think) 2017 and he said something like “You wouldn’t start filming a movie by throwing a bunch of explosions in and then asking to write a script.” At that point it did not resonate with me as I was very gameplay-first type of person, but as time goes I tend to agree with this more and more. You don’t have to sacrifice good gameplay if you go with art and theme first. Rather, you are just building strong game design and marketing foundation right from the start by working on a theme and art of the game.

Predicting the success of the upcoming game

Last year, I was 100% sure that success of one game does not guarantee the success of the next one. I still am. But I’m fairly confident that you can predict if your game is going to work out or not. It does involve a good bit of self-criticism.

Wishlists is the #1 stat for me now before launch. If I had access to Kickstarter – I’d run it for most of my games. Financing is secondary, the primary function is to measure interest / gather response from the audience that you have already gathered.

I don’t think high amount of wishlists matters by itself, you still need to have a decent quality game on launch to maximize the effect. Player feedback at conventions can help, but this is not an ultimate indicator. You also have a hunch, but you really need to be honest with yourself here. If it is not turning out to be amazing – it’s hard to admit it to yourself. You can still release an OK game, just don’t ramp your hopes up.

Statistics and Data

Despite paying for plane tickets / partial stay at the GDC, year 2019 expenses are lower than 2018. This surprised me, but it has an explanation: we had one more worker for 4 months of 2018.

I guess the overall lesson is “employees are expensive”. In Latvia, I (roughly) have to pay 0,66-0,7 EUR in taxes for every 1 EUR of salary that workers get paid to their bank accounts. This was not a surprise for me by itself, but it reinforced my tendency to be extra careful when I consider expanding the studio.

Income sources by year: freelancing vs from our own games

I think this is the first year where our games could effectively sustain us, even if we skipped freelancing altogether. Let’s hope this is not the last.

Merchant of the Skies early access launch ramped up the resources a bit, but essentially that only means that we can self-publish the next game comfortably. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a good result for us. The final release and console ports are a bit further down the line, which could boost the income quite a bit for 2020, but I don’t expect the same peak as in 2019.

Continuing to work on Merchant of the Skies made little sense financially roughly around November 2019, but making the game as good as possible (at least within our abilities/deadlines) has been our #1 focus right from the start. The plan right now is to release a final patch in April, take a break in May and port the game to consoles in June/July. I think the part that “we would be earning the same passive income if we were not doing anything” gets to me a bit (especially since we are trying hard to come up with cool content and campaigns), but ultimately I just want to have a good game in my portfolio that I’m proud of.

My personal regular income would be at least 4 times higher had I stayed at my Software Engineering job

I still take different types of freelance jobs occasionally, albeit much rarer now. It still remains mostly a passion-driven career choice. Quitting my job was 100% worth it, as I enjoy this type of journey with insane ups and downs much more than I enjoyed office work. Always have a backup option though. Always.

The Pressure

I thought that I was ready for anything, but I’m not sure now. As soon as I posted the game, I did not feel like it belongs to me anymore (but that was the plan since the purpose of Early Access is exactly to get player feedback). I think what got me is the constant need and pressure to deliver meaningful updates every month. I don’t mind the work, but the constant anxiety whether I’m doing it enough made me question every life choice that I made. It extends far beyond just games. I took a step back to maintain better work/life balance now and I think this is helping. Drink more water, take more walks, etc.

I’m giving a talk at the GDC

My talk about aesthetic driven development got accepted to GDC this year. I’m going to be talking about how we picked the graphics before we actually started developing Merchant of the Skies and how everyone (with access to art) can do something similar. Don’t be shy and come say hi if you visit GDC this year.

Summary

I think persistence pays off, since financially 2019 has been our most successful year so far. I still see posts on gamedev reddit saying how someone has spent 3+ years on a game and it did not work out and I feel really bad about it, especially since my first game took 2 years (after-work hours) and it turned out bad. Do not think that you are entitled to grants/publishers/sales just because you worked on the game for too long, otherwise you’re setting yourself up for disappointment, it is easy to fall into that trap.

I think we managed to get where we are now by making games  with a smaller scopefirst and then ramping up gradually as our skills grew. We are not successful, but we are sustainable so far. I still have major doubts every time we ship something; I acknowledge the issues with the games but I am just very strict with my own deadlines. Occasionally, I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

GDC Impressions, Eastern European style

Me, July 2018: I should apply for GDC scholarship so that I can complain to my friends because I never get chosen for things.
Game Industry Conference, September 2018: You are accepted for GDC Scholarship
Me: Oh. Cool.

So yes, I went to GDC this year. Thanks to the organisation by “Fundacja Indie Games Polska”, sponsorship from Google for Startups and co-organizing from Game Industry Conference, I was able to stay in a hostel in San-Francisco and get a GDC Conference + Summits pass, entirely for free. It would be unthinkable for me to go otherwise, but alleviating these costs really helped me to go.

In this post, I’ll try to go through the highlights of the trip and my first experience at the GDC and things that a lot of smaller developers can relate / look at the conferences.

The City of San Francisco

The first day in the city felt like paradise. I went to see the Fisherman’s wharf through Chinatown and then to the Golden Gate bridge. The sun was blazing hot (I left a feet of snow back home!), the city is located on a lot of hills and the architecture is rather unique. The parks are beautiful and the animals you meet is not something that I could encounter in the Northern/Eastern Europe. I saw the parrots on the tree! During one of the days I went to the Aquarium: without a doubt, it was a life-changing experience since I’ve never seen something like that. Schools of fish / crabs / medusas / sharks / rays swimming freely and you can observe how they behave.

Next days was more of a wake-up call because I ended up exploring a city center. There are a lot of homeless / mentally ill people. Sometimes it felt like a boring dystopia. Some citizens of San Francisco actually crowd-funded the campaign to avoid building the homeless shelter in their area. I have been warned about the homeless problem before going, but I’ve thought that I’ve seen it all, after travelling through Eastern Europe and living in a country that survived the collapse of Soviet Union and went through relatively noticeable economic decline at one point afterwards. Boy, was I wrong. There are homeless people at almost every corner of the business district; you can’t walk a block without encountering a homeless person. I’ve seen open drug use near the Moscone Center and a lot of syringe needles on some streets. The highlight was the poster of a robotics conference with a bunch of homeless people sleeping near it.

In the end, I think the city is full of contrasts: there are both really good and really bad places to be at. Despite the issues, I’d recommend visiting the city at least once. The variety of food is also not something to be missed due to the multiculturalism of San-Francisco.

The GDC itself

So the whole event is not as hectic as it might seem. The first two days, the expo hall is closed, so you mostly go to the talks or roam around and try to get to know people. The expo opens up on Wednesday and you get one more venue to explore, full of different publisher / engine / game booths. It’s an interesting experience by itself because you can meet like-minded people, see the games that you already know and say hi to the people you’ve seen before. On Friday, the expo is open only for half a day, but talks occur until the evening. Tuesday and Wednesday felt like the busiest days, while Friday felt like “we’re all tired day.” Still, every day was really cool.

The talks

I went to a few talks, but not many. Mostly to the ones whose authors I admire and want to know better (so I can catch them post-talk). Other than that, you can actually watch everything at GDC Vault afterwards so it’s better to spend time talking to people.

Nonetheless, some cool talks that I enjoyed in no particular order (look them up in the vault):

The parties

A lot of socializing actually happens after Moscone Center closes. Every evening, there are multiple parties going on. Without suggesting anything specific: don’t go to the big ones with open entry and no limit. Loud music is also a hard pass for me. I wanted to socialize with the peers and get to know people better. There are also daily events that are targeted at a specific gamedev professions. Without disclosing too much: I went to 5 private events and every one of them has been worth it. The public meeting (Marketer coffee) was also very good because these types of meetups define the roles and expectations of people you want to see there.

To find the relevant parties:

  1. Use the GDC party list.
  2. Write a letter to your partners / platforms / tools that you use and ask if they are planning something. You might not get invited, but you’ll establish a closer personal contact which seems like a win to me.
  3. Join GDC discord and watch what people are saying, there are some sudden meetups happening in Yerba Buena gardens all the time.

The socializing itself and is the event worth it?

First of all, I don’t think that you are going to die / be unsuccessful if you don’t go. There were discussions whether hosting the event in SF promotes accessibility (due to high prices / US entry visa), but if the organizers actually live there, it makes sense: you wouldn’t go to another city just to host something. Or you would, but it’s much more inconvenient.

Next, and I’m speaking for myself, in cases of events like these you never get a direct value back. Getting to know people is a long-time thing. Very few people in your life will e-mail you and ask: “I need this job done for me, I’m paying you X” or “you know what, I’ve randomly saw your game on twitter and I want to publish it” or “Can you suggest me someone who can do X?” – it takes time to know you and you can’t handle relationships as one-time business transactions.

So in a way, the event is a catalyst: if you are a successful developer, it’s easier for you to find like-minded people (or rather get meetings with them and get their replies) and meet with the platform holders. Your opportunities multiply. If you are not there yet – people will be polite but a lot of time you can see when they want to excuse themselves from the conversation, but the ones that stay can genuinely lead to meaningful connections. I felt like I’m on the line: from one side, I’m developing games for 3+ years already, on the other side I’ve never had a hit yet. Despite this, I could connect with people in equal situations and actually (hopefully) make this a beginning of future friendships.

Now, whether you need this particular catalyst is another question: in the end, I met some cool US developers and met with some platform holders which is a good time investment to me. I knew why I was going there and I tried to book the meetings I wanted 4 months in advance. But often you don’t necessarily need to afford to go to US for that: if you are starting out and are in Europe, Game Industry Conference in Poland is definitely a good start because it features both experienced and beginner developers while having a lower cost of entry (I might be biased here, but I was planning to go in any case before I was accepted for the scholarship; my other friends who went were really happy about it too). In a way it was easier for me to connect with people there because the pool of different people wasn’t as huge. Nordic in Sweden and GameOn in Lithuania could also be a good start. Basically, if you don’t have a hit or you don’t have a plan of what you are going to do there, look for the events closer to your home. Basically: KNOW WHY YOU ARE GOING THERE. Otherwise it will just be a cool vacation. YMMV.

Costs:
Plane Ticket to SF and back: ~$900, but I had to do a non-same-ticket transfer which was a huge stress
Expenses while staying (lunches, transport, a few small gifts for friends):  ~$500
Travel Insurance: ~$70

In the end it was roughly around $1500. A very significant sum of money for me, but not life-altering.

In short: I’m going to do it again, but only after I make a successful game and can afford the full trip with the ticket. But with GDC (and all conferences in particular), every event is a step in the ladder towards the next one, you get to know people and enjoy their company, then your social circles expand and you meet more people and find new friends / gain more experience / become more aware of what’s going on in the industry. To me, going to conferences because of that is absolutely worth it.

Lazy Galaxy: Rebel Story

Lessons and statistics after three years as an indie developer

A year ago I’ve published an article about surviving two years as indie developer. On 26th of January 2019, my company turned three years old. 2018 was a year of changes and new revelations, so I’ll try to outline them here. I hope these things will give you a perspective if you are only planning to go into indie / starting out.

My background and current situation: I am 29 years old and live in Riga, Latvia. After doing web development, I went to work as C++ dev for 4 years and then quit my job to start making games. The first year was all about libgdx, until eventually I moved to Unity. My studio has one other employee apart from me. In the end of 2017, we released a _relatively_ successful indie game Lazy Galaxy which combined incremental and RTS game mechanics.

I’m a bit conscious of writing these. If you are a seasoned indie developer – I think you might laugh at my advice/experiences. But if you are thinking about starting out professionally – I’m hoping this could save you some pain. Here goes.

Success of one game does not guarantee the success of the next one.
I guess this is obvious. Still, subpar launches will affect you in a way even if you rationally understand it. When I was launching Lazy Galaxy: Rebel Story, I was fairly confident that “same franchise, different genre, but I’m going to make it.” Yeah, it did not go great even though it’s my highest-quality game so far when it comes to production value.

Aim for niche. But not super-niche niche.
There are too many variables in why Lazy Galaxy release worked and Lazy Galaxy: Rebel Story did not.
I think the incremental game PC market is underpopulated. I also I added a good twist (RTS battles).

For Rebel Story, I went for a SHMUP genre (there weren’t many popular shmups released in 2018 at that point, so I felt I had a chance). The niche might have demand, but it’s way smaller than incrementals.

Do your market research! If your gifs are getting 5-10 likes on Twitter during #screenshotsaturdays, it’s probably not the project you should be focusing on. Same goes for finding a publisher. If you want a publisher and everyone keeps rejecting you – maybe (but not necessarily) you have a risky project on your hands. YMMV.

Lazy Galaxy

Project Scope

Rebel Story took 4 months to make and 2 months to port to Consoles. So far it’s a loss, but it’s (hopefully!) going to be OK in 6 months if I combine the sales on all three platforms. It would not have been OK if the project was longer and if it required more manpower. This is just how it is.

For now I’m still sticking to 6 month projects. Lazy Galaxy was 10 months. But it was that way because it had traction at the release, and I could see that I could keep up with the development without going bankrupt. As soon as sales stopped, I did one more month of updates (adding features on a game that left early access) and moved on. I’d love to heave a project of my life, but it was not it.

I think it’s sensible to not spend more than 6 months on a game if you don’t have enough sales or funding to warrant it. No, that does not mean that you need to abandon your games. That means that you need to have a feature-complete game that could be made in six months. In addition to that, you need to have a plan for how you would update and expand it if it goes well. Be ready to embrace success, but budgeting for failure is also important. You don’t want to go broke if one of your projects failed 🙂

Early access launch is not necessarily “the main and only launch”
At least for small and mid-size indies. Back in 2016-17 I remember people telling me that the early access launch is the main thing that matters and you won’t have a second chance on “normal launch”. I don’t find it to be true, at least not anymore. In my case, Lazy Galaxy got more sales during the launch month than it did when it got to early access.

Which brings me to the next point.

The game release is a sequence of decisions.

Don’t stress it. I can’t pinpoint that one decision that would make the game flop or bring it to the top. I see devs (myself included) worry about release dates, steam tag,  twitter presence, handling early access or “you name it” all the time.

Right now I think that if you mess up in one of these points, things can still work out. There is luck factor involved. You can also do some things right and still fail. Doing things properly just gives you a higher chance to succeed.

Lazy Galaxy was getting 15-20 likes on good #screenshotsaturdays. But it still did OK on launch. Lazy Galaxy had 14th of December release date (bear in mind that it was easier in 2017), but it still did OK. You might luck out, but why risk it if you know better?

Off to space!

Mentorship

In the second half of 2018, I managed to get a help of a mentor! Lottie Bevan from Weather Factory kindly agreed to have short monthly calls or email consultations whenever I needed help. I want to say that this really helps to add perspective to whatever you are doing, even if you feel like you “have it figured out. It really helps to discuss your issues with someone, and getting honest feedback. It has been a tremendous help and I really appreciate it.

Statistics? Data?

First, the (seemingly) depressing graph. Company revenue ( from both freelance and our own games ) vs expenses.

As you can see, the 2017 revenue mostly went to cover our expenses in 2018. 🙂 I am still paying myself close to minimal salary, but it felt more stable this year (I had to skip a few months in 2017 and almost every month in 2016). There is a nitpick though.

Here’s the revenue from my games compared to the income from freelance activities:

2016-2018, Income from freelance vs income from games

2016-2018, Revenue from freelance vs revenue from games

Our own games made the company more money than freelance in 2018. Isn’t it cool? Still not enough to sustain 2 people, but I’m pretty excited about what’s to come in 2019. Seriously.

Bear in mind that I was working on my own games every year at least 50% of the time. 2016 was a terrible year money-wise. My games were subpar to say the best. 2017 was OK, because I could find side-jobs and get some game-related freelance gigs, which I consider to be a step forward. The release of the small arcade game, Frequent Flyer, helped as well.

At the end of 2017, I launched the early access of my game Lazy Galaxy, and released it in March 2018. This proved to be my most-successful game so far. It is fair to say that it broke even and is even bringing a small-ish profit now (my sales dropped by ~70% after October changes though, but maybe it’s not directly related? the game was rather old at that point).

Consoles are pretty cool.

Lazy Galaxy: Rebel Story did not do well on Steam, but consoles fared much better. Both Nintendo Switch and Xbox outsold Rebel Story on Steam. Even though it’s not a huge success story like late indies of 2017, the game did considerably better on consoles.

I still have no idea how consoles pick which developers they want to approve or deny. Even if I did – it would probably be under NDA. I think credibility and released games matter: some people I know could not get in even with better-looking games (compared to Rebel Story) because this was their first game.

In any case: if you can – diversify. If you can’t get to consoles, try to design your games to support phones. Every bit helps. Maybe not so much with phones, but it gives you extra exposure and mobile games are much easier to show at social events.

Lazy Galaxy: Rebel Story

Lazy Galaxy: Rebel Story

GDC

I got a scholarship for GDC, covering the attendance ticket and accommodation in SF. Even though the plane tickets are not cheap, I’ll be able to go this year! I’m both excited and scared, but I am definitely looking forward to it.

If you are going too – drop me a message / email and I’ll be happy to meet up, talk about indie development and chill 🙂 I haven’t been to US before so I’m anticipating some great new experiences.

What I can conclude from 3 years:

  • Persistence pays off. If, in the midst of 2016, someone would have told me that my game will break even, I’d bitterly laugh. Even with “Indiepocalypse,” things are getting better.
  • Even if I am not exactly there yet, I believe that success takes patience. But you also have to look at growth. Dreaming about it is absolutely not enough. You have to be the biggest critic of your own games, even if you are super-proud of them. Lazy Galaxy: Rebel Story is my best game so far, but it’s not the most-successful one. Objectively speaking (and it pains me to say that), even though we wrote 40 full pages of text for character interactions, not many people pay attention to it and the game becomes really forgettable for most people. I am the one to blame for that.
  • I think the tools to make games improved a lot. If you are a hobbyist, you are going to have a time of your life. Just go for it! If you are planning to go full-time indie, remember to have a backup plan and (preferably) a potential side-income.
  • I absolutely don’t regret going indie, but there are some tough days. In essence, I changed security for excitement. My personal income has dropped 4x compared to before I went indie, but I am feeling as fulfilled as ever. I start most days with joy and pleasant anticipation. The financial instability is crazy, but it also motivates me to do as much as possible.


Goals for 2019

  • Double the revenue from my games. It isn’t huge to begin with, so it’s definitely doable if I make some cool stuff.
  • Related to previous one, release the biggest project I’ve ever done so far.
  • Drop my weight to 70kg. When I went indie, I was at a healthy 66kg. At the end of 2018, I hit 84kg (185lbs). My lifestyle choices were not exactly healthy, because I stayed at home so much.

I am fairly sure that not everyone who goes indie will make it. Maybe I’ll be one of those who won’t. Who knows. My days are often filled with worries about the future. But they are equally filled with exciting moments of anticipation and seeing the fruit of my labor. One thing I’m sure of is that things get better with time. If you are willing to face your mistakes and learn from them, you’ll eventually get better. It does not guarantee that you’ll make a hit game, but it gives stability over time. Our games suck less, even if they are not world-class just yet.  I’m hoping to devote my 2019 to making games and I’m looking forward to what we’ll have to show for it in 2020. Peace and may you have a good 2019!

Scam Key Requests on Steam: Who Hides Behind Fake Emails

You know, I have plenty of reasons to enjoy releasing new games. I am sure you can relate to most of them: anticipation of warm reception, fan excitement, monetary gain. But one rather unconventional thing is my anticipation of scam emails. When I’ve started publishing games two years ago, I quickly figured out that people will try to scam you out of the keys. I simply ignored them or asked for verification and they never replied. But since about a year ago, I’ve actually started asking them to share their reasons and insights. I’ve learned a few things that I think could benefit you too if you are publishing games on Steam.

Group of Egrets by Ohara Koson. The images are just here to make text easier to read. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

Group of Egrets by Ohara Koson. The images are just here to make text easier to read. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

Background

The usual conversation starts like this:

Scammer:Hi [studio name in best case, generic greeting at worst], I’m a huge youtuber and I need a few keys [first red flag] to review the game.
Me[after doing checks and figuring out it’s a scam]: Oh sure, can I ask a few questions then?
Scammer[best case]:Sure
Me:

Great!
Since original [youtuber] email is different, I know that you are pretending to be someone you are not.

That’s fine, I’m not judging you for that. I always wanted to ask some things (in non-agressive way) to people who try to get keys this way. If you have some time, do you mind answering a few questions for the interviewing purposes (anonymity guaranteed of course)?

1) Is this more of a hobby or does it actually sustains your living?
2) If you sell those on platforms like g2a/kinguin/etc – are they trying to identify you in any way? Have you ever faced repercussions for their side (i.e. if dev sent you a bad key)?

Thanks for your time,
Vladimir

___

After that, if they reply, the conversation starts. I’ve spent about a year gathering these replies, trying to persistently follow-up some people for 10+ times. My small research outlines the reasons why people do it. Since my native language is Russian (and a lot of these people come from from Russia), it helped when I addressed them in native language too. The replies are translated. The research group is small: out of 20 emails I’ve responded, 6 answered and only 4 of them gave interesting answers. Three out of four replies were in Russian, I’ve translated them. Here are the cases and reasons below:

Crows at full moon (1925 - 1936) by Ohara Koson (1877-1945).

Crows at full moon (1925 – 1936) by Ohara Koson (1877-1945).

Case 1: codename “anonymous

Letter not quoted directly by request [translated from russian + word order changed in some places].

Hi Vladimir.

For most people, me included, these shenanigans is, of course, a hobby. We just want to fill our libraries and exchange keys to get other games. For this to be profitable – you’ll have to make it a full-time job.

That means spending 10+ hours a day spending on boring routine: finding emails, names, registering fake mail accounts, working with key markets. This could bring significant income earlier, but now there are so many of us and markets are charging ridiculous percentages. To earn around $1000 a month now, you’d have to spend tons of time on routine. Most of the keys are getting exchanged by collectors. I feel like the used key markets only get a small amount of scammed keys (that were sent to fake press).

Speaking about key markets like g2a or kinguing: their owners are on a sketchy path. On one side, most of their profits are from those “gray” keys and they perfectly understand that: self-respecting publishers and developers don’t want to cooperate, but legal key sellers can’t compete with “gray” keys because they can infinitely underbid them and still turn profit. The platforms have to publicly show their honesty and fight against fake key resellers, but in truth they do these things half-heartedly, since if they move the platforms towards legal key sales – their profits will drop significantly and someone else will take the niche.

Regarding the fines from the gray key markets: it’s against their best interests. If the trader’s every second or third key is fake – he will get banned, but this probably does not happen often. Maybe there are 5% of problematic key sales, so platforms and traders can easily refund the money to the buyer. One interesting thing is that since there is no official check whether the key is legit, some buyers actually purchase the key, activate it on their other accounts and send the support request about receiving a fake key. G2a and Kinguin almost always take the customer’s side, that’s why sellers literally “gift” the keys to the buyers. That’s one more reason why traders are not fined and legal key sellers have no reason to be there.

It’s not surprising that not many people respond to you. Most of them are just kids and not seasoned criminals, who think “it does not cost anything for developers – but we won’t buy the game anyway so it’s not theft and not a loss of profit.” No surprise that these types of talks make people feel guilty.

Long-eared owl on bare tree branch (1900 - 1930) by Ohara Koson

Long-eared owl on bare tree branch (1900 – 1930) by Ohara Koson

Case 2, codename “Rome”:


> Ok Vladimir

For me it’s a hobby, I collect games. Finance does not allow to buy a

lot of games, My friend advised to do so

Thank you.

>Got it, thanks for your reply! Why not just pirate them from torrents?

>Because I do not play games, I just collect them on Steam account.

It’s just a hobby

>If you are just collecting them, why do you need multiple keys?


>For exchanges with other collectors


Not much, but at least the explanations were clear.

Chicken and cock (1900 - 1936) by Ohara Koson (1877-1945)

Chicken and cock (1900 – 1936) by Ohara Koson (1877-1945)

Case 3, codename “Trader


> Hey. OK, I’ll answer.
1) 50-50.
It brings me hefty sums of money. It’s not my main source of income, since I still have a youtube channel where I create videos or dubs. I also own a few steam curator groups. It’s just a way for me to get some more money for more serious projects. I have a few original twitch ideas which are in development. In short: I want to stop doing it as soon as possible and move on to my own projects before the end of the year.
2) When you are registering on g2a / kinguin, you always need to show a source where the keys are coming from. The systems are different on both platforms. i.e. G2A sometimes asks for “screens” describing where the key comes from, but this is easily circumvented if you have some experience behind your back. Apart from that, the fake key shops usually don’t have names (that match youtubers name used in introduction) and the emails are different anyway.
2.1)
The fines occasionally happen when developers send bad keys instead of simply ignoring us. Sometimes this can be noticed (developers tend to send their messages this way, I think I don’t need to explain the meaning of those), but often the other keys go straight for sale. The consequences are very different on both platforms: if key has been purchased and it did not work, you just give a chargeback. But if this repeats, say, 5 times a week, you get fined. Also, if we receive many keys in one letter, we check one for verification purposes.
If you have something else to ask – fire away.

Me:

Thank you! Since you’ve offered, here’s a few more:
1) if it’s not too personal: what does a “hefty sum of money” means? Everyone has a different definition: are we talking about thousands / tens of thousands / hundreds of thousands roubles? Not asking for exact sum, more like a range.
2)
Are there any groups of people that do it collectively? Maybe you have some contacts that I can get more interviews? Pretty hard to get answers from other fake emails.

Reply:

> 1) It depends how “boldthe user of this method is. I know a man who could move to other country and comfortably live there thanks to this, having this as mostly his main source of income. If you spam a lot of people from 3-5 different addresses – you can get an idea how many keys you can get. I’ll tell it from my own experience: 400-600 EUR is a pretty average monthly income, especially if you have your own curator groups. If someone has lots of them and works tirelessly – 1000 EUR is definitely reachable.
2) I don’t think you’ll ever find these,
and I don’t think such communities exists. Even if they do – these are going to be closed-type things.

Another thing is that the digital key has no price, since you can generate it for free. That’s why it does not seem like such a horrible thing. You sell the key, the game gets new audience. The only thing is that you, developers, are not going to get a percentage, which makes it mostly your problem.

Songbird on blossom branch (1900 - 1936) by Ohara Koson (1877-1945)

Songbird on blossom branch (1900 – 1936) by Ohara Koson (1877-1945)

Case 4, codename “Not Really A Scammer”

this was actually a two very similar curator group requests for keys. I’ve compared them and they had the same owners, hence I sent my “clarification/you are a scam” email. While it’s not technically a scam, I still think it teaches a few things about curation circles.

> Hello, Vladimir. To be honest, you are making your conclusions based on inherently wrong assumptions, because you do not understand who creates curator groups and for what purposes. In truth, Curator Groups are a poor way for key acquisition.

Promoting them takes money and 90% of the games we are getting through curator connect. Those keys can not be given to other people: they can only be accepted by group owner and moderators. That’s why it’s one of the purposes why some of the curation groups have similar owners and moderators. The developers often send multiple keys of the game so owners of the curation groups (and you have to understand that these people often know each other since they are all into game collecting) give each other access to redeem the extra copies between themselves. It does not mean that curators are trying to cheat the developers: developers get honest reviews, but curators get +1 game to their library + some more game copies that can be exchanged with other group owners. Apart from that, there are “hired reviewers” – people that are not owners / moderators of curator groups, but just help to write reviews. They get keys to write content for the curator group, thus reducing our workload.
In conclusion, I think you are mistaken in your guess. Curator groups can’t really make money on game reselling, since most games are given not as keys, but as curator connect copies. The expenses for promoting and maintaining the group are higher than potential income from selling the games. People who sell keys do not create curator groups, but at most can exchange their keys with other curators for less “liquid” game.

I’ll expand my previous explanation so you can get the proportions of this: you think everything is based on profiteering, but it’s a mistake. Everything is based on collecting games. I am number X[calls his position, very close to top, double digit number] of user rank by games owned on steam. I am a moderator in the curator groups of people who rank Y,Z,U,W [anonymized, single and double digit numbers], e.t.c. Realize that there are 100 million user accounts and we are on top of it. People who collect games, people like me, we do not earn money from games, we are the ones who spend it.

Me:

> Hey! Thanks for the detailed answer: that’s why I’m writing these letters 🙂 If you are curious about my position:
1) I have no problem with collecting, but I constantly get offers through paid promotions through curator groups + key requests
for reselling from quasi-legit curators. Due to this my trust in curators has seriously been shattered, especially since multiple group have the same moderators and owners.

2) Another thing that makes me think: most of these groups have only positive reviews. I’m sure that some of the developers would like positive-only feedback for their game, but overall it creates a “fake” impression about the group.
3) Most of journalists introduce themselves. In your case I only get generic letter where the only thing has been replaced is the game name.

Reply:

> Hello Again. You know what, you are partially correct. Advertising through curators won’t give you the same effect as advertising through youtubers or magazines. On the other hand, indie-developers are glad to receive our help too. Firstly because the aforementioned youtubers and magazines are mostly concentrating on AAA games / AA indies and won’t cover it if you simply give them the copy of your $5 / $10 game. So curator advertising is actually free: for a few press copies that can’t be re-sold apart from giving it away to group moderators, you gt some exposure. For us, it’s a hobby and not a job so it’s easy to arrange a positive review.

On the other hand you need to explain what you think by “fake group.” Most of the groups have real, active subscribers. Yes, of course we bring them in through advertised free key giveaways. But nonetheless they are real players and if curator writes a review, the review is going to have some clicks. Roughly speaking, for every 10000 subscribers you’ll be getting 50-200 targeted page visits. It depends on the game: popular ones will get more, asset flips – much less. But those are real visits, which were triggered because player has seen a curator review in their timeline.

So of course don’t consider an advertisement through curators as panacea for successful sales or main marketing direction for your game, but a side thing that brings you conversions and essentially is free, for a meagre price of the game copies that can’t be passed to curator non-admins anyway. That’s why developers should actively use “Curator Connect” system, since it guarantees that no keys will be re-sold and even if curator does not make a review – the developer won’t get any financial losses.

 

____
Conclusions:

It’s up to you what you want to think about all of this. I suppose I can see it being lucrative side-business in eastern countries, mainly because of our low living expenses, so the keys can make a significant supplementary living income. Even if people ask it for their collecting hobby, they exchange your keys and because of that these keys might end up on key markets.

1) Most people who scam you out of the keys don’t see it as a theft.
2) Keys from curator connect can’t be resold. But think whether you need to send multiple keys to two curators that have essentially the same audience.
3) Scammers often register their own “real news” website domains now. Check the linked website twitter / facebook accounts. If it’s a “real” youtuber with 5k subscribers, check out their videos and if they get enough views and comments.

I’ll probably add more answers if I’ll get them, but I won’t stop sending my questions: even behind cold replies I saw the glimpses of personalities.

If you liked the article, you can follow my twitter or check out the latest game game that I’ve made with my girlfriend, called Lazy Galaxy: Rebel Story (I was able to complete my ‘research’ partly to its release 🙂

 

Great geese in flight (1925 - 1936) by Ohara Koson (1877-1945).

Great geese in flight (1925 – 1936) by Ohara Koson (1877-1945).