We recently saw that sankey chart of the revenue split for Schedule I dev (with some mistakes).

[elanis@mastodon.gamedev.place]

We recently saw that sankey chart of the revenue split for Schedule I dev (with some mistakes).

So here's my own version for my games. 5.5 years of copies sold and taxes percentage is based on my whole company (gamedev + freelance) taxes %. Yep, I don't get a lot of money eventually 😅

#solodev #gamedev #steam

[elanis@mastodon.gamedev.place]

Oh, and to give a full picture. During these 5.5 years I spent:
- 450+ hours working on those two games (dev, comm', support)
- 900+ hours on gamedev (these games, others, libs, wiki)
- 3.5k+ hrs on my personal projects (these are my only hobby-related revenues)

You can calculate the hourly rate 😅

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@Elanis Would be interesting to see which ones are one time or constant costs and which ones scale with sales.

(VAT and Steam cut is proportional to sales, but would you pay twice as much company taxes for twice as many sales?)

(Also, which country do you pay your taxes in?)

[elanis@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@dragonfi Hi!

Most of the costs are proportional to the revenue. If I had very low revenues on the company, taxes would be a bit lower (we probably could go from 45%ish to 25ish percent by reducing revenues and usng another company type, but it would be barely livable).

The "some spendings" part are a matter of a hundreds $ a year, and I put them proportional to the revenue, so my freelance work is just paying for this. Here that would be a few dozen $ max in that graph.

That's in France :)

[elanis@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@dragonfi
And to conclude, because I didn't have enough place to write: by increasing revenues, the percentage would stay about the same :)

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@Elanis Thanks! Around a decade ago back in Hungary we tried turning a hobby into a business and ran into the issue of fixed fees that we would have needed to overcome before it's not just a money sink.

It's good to see that it turns out somewhat better for you in France.

[elanis@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@dragonfi Yep, I understand. A few years back that's what you'd have with game engines. Now it seems a bit easier on that point.

I don't use any game engine so I don't have this issue (but I have some others 😆)

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@Elanis At the very least we have Godot now. It's pretty capable for the price of free, no strings attached.

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@Elanis What language and library do you use instead of a complete engine?

(Also, I checked out your games and I'm hyped for Logistik.)

[elanis@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@dragonfi Yep! Indeed :)

[elanis@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@dragonfi I'm mostly working with web technologies, namely React and my own 2D canvas library for games :)
But I've tried Godot recently for a jam and I really liked it, so I may work on a game with Godot at some point.

And thanks!