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Dev of slept-on tactical RPG says it "sold badly" despite glowing reviews: "My next project will be more focused on 'Does this sell'" (www.gamesradar.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] -6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here already, is that the game is only on Steam. Which limits the customer base to Steam, yes it's a massive audience but they're missing out on free sales by not listing it on places like GOG, Itch.io, Gamejolt, etc

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The reality is those other platforms won't make much difference on sales at all, and with a limited indie dev team they've made a wise decision to focus on the largest PC storefront.

It's the same reason a lot of indies don't target Linux, the effort vs reward simply doesn't make sense for small teams. Anyone who says "But Unity and Unreal Engine support Linux! It's literally two clicks!" has no idea what they're talking about and hasn't actually been through the process of releasing a game for multiple platforms.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's a pretty big difference between "Selling the exact same binaries on different stores" and "Supporting a whole different OS with it's own alien ecosystem" =P

In the case of store fronts, we're talking about more sales (even if it's extremely low) that literally take 0 effort to do.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

No, see you've fallen into the exact trap I just described. The "exact same binaries" is not true. The Steam build will have the Steam overlay SDK integrated into it. The GOG build won't. Each store may require its own SDK and API integrated into the build. But even they were the exact same binaries, you've still got to think about QA, build pipelines, storefront configuration (including achievements and online subsystems like leaderboards, parties/lobbies and voice chat, plus collectables and any other bespoke stuff a particular store has) and community management, plus any age ratings and certification/testing each store requires (though PC is usually pretty sparse on this front).

For small indie teams, all of this can seriously eat away at your time, so it makes sense to limit how many stores you target based on risk vs reward.

Edit: btw I'm not trying to be a troll, I just know from first-hand experience. I've been in the games industry for over two decades and have done everything from AAA to running my own indie studio. Indie development is brutal, you really have to be clever about your time management otherwise your risk of failure skyrockets.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Probably close-to-zero direct sales on any platform but Steam. It would at least get there name out there more, which it absolutely not nothing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The article stated that the game is also on Nintendo Switch.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Well, this is the PC Gaming lemmy community, so I'm just talking about PC