Mike Rose (CEO of PC publisher NoMoreRobots) publishes Steam game sales analysis (average game making 16k a year, down 47% from 2018) [See threadmark]

Deleted member 42 · Sep 10, 2019

Off the heels of the thread I made a while back: https://www.resetera.com/threads/mi...-revenue-for-steam-games-is-under-25k.137682/

Mike just finished his analysis and put it up here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W6lZir97bUU0KdvIGNIVWG0O-_A3QrdN/view

A few tweets about it:

https://twitter.com/RaveofRavendale/status/1171427502037725184

https://twitter.com/RaveofRavendale/status/1171428434653765637

tldr;
Game prices are lower than ever
More people are playing F2P games
Backlogs are filling up
So many games are coming out every month
I should make a video game and it should cost 25 dollars

Deleted member 10551 · Sep 10, 2019

This is why a lot of devs want alternatives to Steam to pop up. the Switch and EGS don't have those backlogs, and they think they can sell more on there, at least for a while.

The level of competition on Steam is insane, and it's great for consumers, good for Steam, terrible for the publishers.

Danthrax · Sep 10, 2019

well I mean

Usually games priced over $20 also have marketing budgets, while games priced $10 or less often do not

Deleted member 6235 · Sep 10, 2019

crazyfunster said:
This is why a lot of devs want alternatives to Steam to pop up. the Switch and EGS don't have those backlogs, and they think they can sell more on there, at least for a while.

The level of competition on Steam is insane, and it's great for consumers, good for Steam, terrible for the publishers.

We don't have any data to use as evidence that EGS sells more software, though. The thing that they do, and that is definitely an incentive, is give financial backing and security for indie teams.

Danthrax said:
well I mean

Usually games priced over $20 also have marketing budgets, while games priced $10 or less often do not

That's not necessarily true. I'm fairly sure that Factorio didn't have much of a marketing budget.

MattXIII · Sep 10, 2019

Yeah, GAAS definitely eating new smaller title's lunch.

Duxxy3 · Sep 10, 2019

I'm gonna go with - the Steam market is completely flooded with games.

New Username · Sep 10, 2019

Edit: Deleted post

kirbyfan407 · Sep 10, 2019

It seems that "average" means median and that the bottom 80% of games was already removed. I'm guessing the reason the mean revenue of that subset is so much higher than the median revenue is because there are megahits making tons of money and bumping everything up.

Nome · Sep 10, 2019

In China ATM so sadly I can't see Google Drive... or Twitter... or half the image hosts people use here.

Is this $17k figure a median or mean? There was a lot of confusion over that in the last thread.

Edit: answered by the post above lol

thepenguin55 · Sep 10, 2019

BronsonLee said:
Game prices are lower than ever
More people are playing F2P games
Backlogs are filling up
So many games are coming out every month

Yeah, F2P and to some extent even $60 live games are kind of killing more traditional or single player games sales. I'm sure they'll rebound at some point but yeah. This is probably all made worse by the fact that a lot of AAA studios have kind of turtled up as they're all getting ready for next gen. There have been AAA games this year but it definitely feels like things have slowed to a trickle this year compared to last.

Unkindled · Sep 10, 2019

There is no indepth analysis from what I am seeing. Are we just going by his word?

Hektor · Sep 10, 2019

I think taking the "top 20%" as a base for an analysis is a flawed method because it's a variable number, the games included in the top 20% are defined not just by themsselfs, but also the other 80%.

If the total percentual amount of 'asset flips' arriving at the store becomes greater than prior years for example, it will automatically flush more non-asset flips but still bad selling games into the "top 20%", and thus reduce the "average income" of the top 20%.

I think it would have been more sensible to go with a fixed number of the top 500 releases or something if you're going to compare year by year.

Deleted member 18857 · Sep 10, 2019

crazyfunster said:
This is why a lot of devs want alternatives to Steam to pop up. the Switch and EGS don't have those backlogs, and they think they can sell more on there, at least for a while.

That's something I don't understand. I have a backlog on Steam, on UPlay, on Switch, hell, even on PS2. They're all the same backlog, because the issue is I don't have time generally, not "Steam time" or "Switch time".
Does creating a new storefront make people's days longer?

Pryme · Sep 10, 2019

I agree with the commenters here saying he needs to show his work. All we have is the results of the analysis, not enough to know if he did a thorough job or not

Aaron D. · Sep 10, 2019

Iggy said:
Does creating a new storefront make people's days longer?

Bingo.

PanzerKraken · Sep 10, 2019

Duxxy3 said:
I'm gonna go with - the Steam market is completely flooded with games.

Yea Steam opened flood gate avenue for so many low tier games, the service is flooded and it's gotten hard to find anything decent or pick and choose anymore. So many games splash the page of Steam when you open it and you have no clue what any of them are anymore. So many games that even the gaming community and journalists can't keep up with or cover

9point81 · Sep 10, 2019

The games too cheap point makes sense. The Epic Games store seems to have a higher than Steam average game cost. Many more games higher than $20.

DailyCalmSpirit · Sep 10, 2019

Definitely interesting insights here.

I hate to say it, but, I'll admit all these subscription services and constant sales have had a huge effect on my purchasing habits. The only games I buy day-one, full-price anymore are AAA games that I'm super psyched for.

It bums me out, but, I'm conditioned to wait for sales on indie games now. To be fair, I feel like the onus isn't on me, here. I feel like customers of any product should always look/wait for the best deal.

kiguel182 · Sep 10, 2019

There are too many games coming up and they are cheap as hell.

These are scary numbers given it's the top 20 per cent...

scitek · Sep 10, 2019

PanzerKraken said:
Yea Steam opened flood gate avenue for so many low tier games, the service is flooded and it's gotten hard to find anything decent or pick and choose anymore. So many games splash the page of Steam when you open it and you have no clue what any of them are anymore. So many games that even the gaming community and journalists can't keep up with or cover

I've never bought games by just browsing a store and picking something at random. Hell, I don't think I've even done that in an actual brick and mortar store before. Developers need to get the word out about their games and not just hope people stumble across it.

Dr. Mario · Sep 10, 2019

If it was on average it would be meaningless, but for the top 20% that's a pretty shocking statistic.

The price argument is interesting though. IIRC research in microtransactions also found that you can raise the price of a desirable item to about $20 and people will buy the same volume of it. The hurdle is actually buying stuff and only much later the amount of money. There seems to be some magical impulse buy turning point around 20-25.

Cactuar · Sep 10, 2019

Sounds extremely low, but I need more context. How does this compare to the top 20% of PSN for example? Xbox One? Switch?

Skyebaron · Sep 10, 2019

Valve allowing so much shovelware in was a mistake.

Burai · Sep 10, 2019

Yeah, Indie devs, put your prices up. That'll magically give us all another few hours of disposable leisure time to play your totally original game that I haven't played a million times already for less money.

Ten years ago I'd have killed for a decent, new Metroidvania. Now there's one released every six weeks.

"B-but ours has got light crafting elements!"

Yeah, good for you.

Komo · Sep 10, 2019

Duxxy3 said:
I'm gonna go with - the Steam market is completely flooded with games.

Nah this wouldn't be it. If the games they make are good they will grow and make revenue. The games other then descenders that they've published aren't really popular because they don't appeal to a bigger range of people so they don't sell as much.

Kalor · Sep 10, 2019

It's a bad time if you're trying to make it as a solo dev or small team. Valve are experimenting with their Steam Labs stuff but it might be too late, it definitely is for some developers.

spam musubi · Sep 10, 2019

Iggy said:
That's something I don't understand. I have a backlog on Steam, on UPlay, on Switch, hell, even on PS2. They're all the same backlog, because the issue is I don't have time generally, not "Steam time" or "Switch time".
Does creating a new storefront make people's days longer?

This. Making it a steam vs EGS issue is just stupid storefront fanboyism. There just are more games competing for people's time period. Plus non game activities like streaming services. The thing about the indie book is that it means there are more indie developers competing for the pie. Not every dev is going to succeed, and on average each dev is going to eat into each other's sales unless the market grows at the same rate that we are getting new devs.

OnionPowder · Sep 10, 2019

Granjinha said:
That's not necessarily true. I'm fairly sure that Factorio didn't have much of a marketing budget.

usually being the key word. Factorio is an exception to most other games in terms of units sold.

Most $20 games would dream of selling 1.5 million copies.

Danthrax · Sep 10, 2019

Granjinha said:
That's not necessarily true. I'm fairly sure that Factorio didn't have much of a marketing budget.

hence the words "usually" and "often" =P

There are always exceptions, but those exceptions don't preclude drawing conclusions from larger trends.

Cosmic Schwung · Sep 10, 2019

"The main takeaway for me, personally, is that developers are still pricing their games waaaay too low!"

Interesting take. His numbers show more expensive games usually sell more copies than the cheaper games. That's presumably because they have larger advertising budgets, and probably larger production budgets which can go towards making them look visually more appealing to the casual gamer.

I think a more interesting question would be how much revenue generated on steam has changed relative to the number of games being released. The huge number of quality games getting released must be a factor.

ckareset · Sep 10, 2019

At least the games are cheap

OnionPowder · Sep 10, 2019

ckareset said:
At least the games are cheap

But if we're not buying them then they won't stay that cheap.

Cactuar said:
Sounds extremely low, but I need more context. How does this compare to the top 20% of PSN for example? Xbox One? Switch?

We will probably never get those details

ShinUltramanJ · Sep 10, 2019

crazyfunster said:
This is why a lot of devs want alternatives to Steam to pop up. the Switch and EGS don't have those backlogs, and they think they can sell more on there, at least for a while.

The level of competition on Steam is insane, and it's great for consumers, good for Steam, terrible for the publishers.

Switch has an enormous glut of games, and is a pain to sift through. It's in no way comparable to the EGS, which hardly has any games at all.

The reality is sales are being impacted from all of the free giveaways, bundle deals, and subscription offerings. Sure developers may not sell as many copies, but some are getting paid to have their games on those subscription services, or to be given away.

Thac · Sep 10, 2019

Too many games to play - not enough time to play them all.

ramoisdead · Sep 10, 2019

Skyebaron said:
Valve allowing so much shovelware in was a mistake.

Shovelware isn't a detriment of why sales are lower. A lot of games ranging from decent to excellent are coming out more than ever every month. Plus GaaS games in full rampant, it's why you see a decline in sales for individual titles that don't get exposure compared to others.

No one is buying shovelware content more so than good games on Steam.

JD3Nine · Sep 10, 2019

I probably buy more full priced indies than a lot of Steam users ( 3 a month or so ) but after a while you're just getting buried in games. In any genre you can name my backlog is full of all time classics that I didn't get to yet.

There is just too many good games / not enough time and I don't know how you can solve this problem.

Dalik · Sep 10, 2019

Don't see anything wrong here, there are way way more games than last year, every year actually, but we don't magically have more money and time to spend them with, so of course games sell less, i don't understand what is this results supposed to show.
If you want to sell you need to be original and market your stuff. See greedfall being a good game and going from games with 30 peak players to 11k.

Stop chasing the new "in" genre and start making something that its missing or lacking in the industry is my advice.

Burai said:
Yeah, Indie devs, put your prices up. That'll magically give us all another few hours of disposable leisure time to play your totally original game that I haven't played a million times already for less money.

Ten years ago I'd have killed for a decent, new Metroidvania. Now there's one released every six weeks.

"B-but ours has got light crafting elements!"

Yeah, good for you.

Agreed completely.

Javetus · Sep 10, 2019

But... I don't see a proper analysis, I would need some more data.

Hamster Plugin · Sep 10, 2019

I just got two years and two months of Game Pass for €87 and six more months through Ryzen and Alienware.

I'll be buying indie games in May 2022 again.

Papacheeks · Sep 10, 2019

The issue isn't the pricing it's the gigantic flood of content thats added on a weekly basis. There's too much garbage, and too much flash/anime/porn games among early access games that are not even really games but shit mods.

Instead of having to customize filters for steam, they should literally have harder prerequisite for games being on their store. If it's early access it needs to have original assets and not generic ones found in engines.

Mod type of games need to be weeded out with such a system, until it can go through approval process. I think also there should be sections that sgregate dedicated VR games.

I would get rid of flash games, anime/adult games. Or have a separate adult section that requires a login and age verification. Issue is all of this is occupying the store. And no one on their personal time really uses the filters in such a hardcore way that all they see is top tier indie without all the added garbage. Having things. If they remove a lot of the garbage and help organize it better you would have better sales for smaller developers.

I mean the same thing is happening to PSN and now the switch. There so much shit occupying the store now it's hard to weed through it because at the pace stuff is added. And a lot of the mobile/flash/ mod type of games are occupying front pages of these stores.

Which I believe is why epic is so selective in what they put on their store.

Deleted member 45414 · Sep 10, 2019

*These are estimates and should be treated as such.*

Iacomus · Sep 10, 2019

I don't know, when Mike Rose posts are put here he generally raises issues with the pricing, but they are related to his games as the main factor.

I wonder if the highlighted problems are that he has put on a value on his own product instead of these other factors. Maybe the game is just not fun, and the game itself is no longer an appeal in the type of market it is going for.

But what do I know I'm not CEO of a company :(

Teh_Lurv · Sep 10, 2019

I think those stats show we're on the cusp of another video game crash, only this time it will primarily impact the indie and middle-budget segments of the industry.

kaftan · Sep 10, 2019

It's awful. Not to mention these numbers are revenues, so subtract from that Valve's 30% tax, possible residuals on development software, perhaps a cut for a publisher, then apply real tax.... Game developers really need to stand together and demand either a 15% or even lower cut or leave with their business somewhere else. Taking 1/3 of game's earning for hosting it is not acceptable anymore.

Thardin · Sep 10, 2019

Wouldn't EGS buying exclusives also influence this? If Steam isn't getting all the big selling games this year then it would make sense for the top 20% to slide down since it isn't carried by the heavy hitters.

Seems like we don't really have enough information to accurately say what is going on.

Csr · Sep 10, 2019

I am confused about his price point comparisons. If i understand correctly he shows that games with higher price also sell more but are the games with higher price points selling more because of their price or because of their quality/content/marketing hence the price increase compared to other games?
How exactly did he come to the conclusion that developers are pricing the games way too low?

Htown · Sep 10, 2019

PanzerKraken said:
Yea Steam opened flood gate avenue for so many low tier games, the service is flooded and it's gotten hard to find anything decent or pick and choose anymore

this is false

the problem is too many good games, not too many trash games

it's extremely easy to avoid trash games

PanzerKraken said:
So many games splash the page of Steam when you open it and you have no clue what any of them are anymore.

this is a bad thing? sounds like it's pushing games with lower marketing budgets to the surface

"if I haven't heard of it it must be bad" is certainly an interesting take

Alexandros · Sep 10, 2019

Skyebaron said:
Valve allowing so much shovelware in was a mistake.

What you call shovelware actually includes a lot of decent to great games.

eonden · Sep 10, 2019

crazyfunster said:
This is why a lot of devs want alternatives to Steam to pop up. the Switch and EGS don't have those backlogs, and they think they can sell more on there, at least for a while.

The level of competition on Steam is insane, and it's great for consumers, good for Steam, terrible for the publishers.

Taking into account that he also commented that the bad sales numbers was not only a Steam thing but an industry wide thing previously (and that most indie developers still report PC as their main revenue winner, together with Switch), it is more of an issue of poverty of richness, where there are too many offerings regardless of backlog.
Most devs want alternatives to Steam because they believe it would create a new "gold rush" as normally seen when a new console launches, but it has hardly happened, and taking into account how "easy" is to try other stuff on PC, the backlog would still be there, regardless.

kaftan said:
It's awful. Not to mention these numbers are revenues, so subtract from that Valve's 30% tax, possible residuals on development software, perhaps a cut for a publisher, then apply real tax.... Game developers really need to stand together and demand either a 15% or even lower cut or leave with their business somewhere else. Taking 1/3 of game's earning for hosting it is not acceptable anymore.

Go home with that "tax" bs.

Armaros · Sep 10, 2019

There is literally no way to know how he got these numbers, the methodology. or what. He is randomly chopping off entire segments of the data and yet doesn't show us the methodology of why?

Mike Rose (CEO of PC publisher NoMoreRobots) publishes Steam game sales analysis (average game making 16k a year, down 47% from 2018) [See threadmark]

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