Guide for an indie developer:How to get money from your Steam game

How to make a game with a chance to pay off?
Before, players used to wait for new game releases with trembling and were ready to play anything new that had pretty logo and screenshots. Over the past 10 years, the situation has completely changed. Every day there are dozens of new games released for PC/consoles and hundreds for mobile platforms like iOS and Android. Now games are lining up to get at least some attention from the player, but far from all of them get attention.
Referring to statistics, I’d say that your game won’t magically get huge audience growth just because you told the world about it when releasing it on Steam.
There’s a 99% chance that it will drown in the flow of releases, and in the next 3 years of your game being on Steam you’ll earn 1000$-3000$ at most, that, after subtracting VAT and 30% platform cut, will be transferred to your bank account.
For Steam, just like for other digital stores, it’s unprofitable to promote products made by indie studios. And it doesn’t matter how many millions of players use the platform daily, they won’t see your product.
So how can you make your game pay off? For that, it’s necessary to meet the following requirements:
- Estimate the volume of potential player audience and make predictions of game’s sales.
- Define the game’s budget and minimize development costs.
- Be ready for the fact that the first game won’t pay off financially, but also have plans for its growth.
- Do marketing for the game.
