I saw a story on slashdot recently. The creator of “Minecraft” had his paypal account suspended, and he can’t get his money out of the account. The money was for pre-orders of his game. He started developing the game in May 2009 and released an alpha version of the game the same week. So, how much money in pre-orders does he (claim) to have? 600,000 Euros (roughly $760,000). That’s pretty mind-boggling for one and a half years of work. It’s also a few orders of magnitude more money than I’m earning. (To be honest, my initial reaction to the story was that the number was fake, and it was all a big publicity stunt. After reading a little more about it, though, I think it might be true.)
I’m planning to release financial numbers for my game at some point in the future, but I’ve already suggested that it hasn’t been a financial success. And, it’s not that I need to make a ton of money, like Minecraft, but I at least need to make enough to pay my bills. I guess it’s all feast or famine in the indie game business. I think 99% of us are on the “famine” side of it.
Update, Sept 18: I just got some numbers from the sale that started last month. There was a nice increase in revenue from that, so that’s encouraging!
Haha, I had the same reaction. Just goes to show there is money out there for us!