The huge majority of indie games never make any money at all. This link is a little older, but it claims that 50% of indie games on steam never make more than $4000, only 25% ever make more than $26 000 and only 14% cross the $100k mark.
Considering the cost of developers, that’s about 1-2 man years for the $100k mark, and then there’s only a 14% chance of even recouping that.
Passion projects work out because the people making them don’t value their time as work time, don’t make a salary from it, and even then in the huge majority of cases, it doesn’t work out financially.
Imagine having 10k employees and not setting aside an indie dev team or two for passion projects.
This statement holds true for pretty much every other corporation. Imagine owning a huge farm and not setting aside a few farm hands to grow old artisan vegetables. Imagine owning a supermarket chain and not setting aside a few shops for exotic sweets from Central Africa. Imagine owning a fast food chain and not setting aside a few restaurants for artisan burger variations.
Yes, every corporation could afford to do stuff like that, but they aren’t there to advance humanity by investing in arts and crafts, but for making every last drop of money they can. And yes, there’s much to criticise about this goal, but making little indie passion projects doesn’t work well with corporations.
The huge majority of indie games never make any money at all. This link is a little older, but it claims that 50% of indie games on steam never make more than $4000, only 25% ever make more than $26 000 and only 14% cross the $100k mark.
Considering the cost of developers, that’s about 1-2 man years for the $100k mark, and then there’s only a 14% chance of even recouping that.
Passion projects work out because the people making them don’t value their time as work time, don’t make a salary from it, and even then in the huge majority of cases, it doesn’t work out financially.
This statement holds true for pretty much every other corporation. Imagine owning a huge farm and not setting aside a few farm hands to grow old artisan vegetables. Imagine owning a supermarket chain and not setting aside a few shops for exotic sweets from Central Africa. Imagine owning a fast food chain and not setting aside a few restaurants for artisan burger variations.
Yes, every corporation could afford to do stuff like that, but they aren’t there to advance humanity by investing in arts and crafts, but for making every last drop of money they can. And yes, there’s much to criticise about this goal, but making little indie passion projects doesn’t work well with corporations.