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How Much Do Game Developers Make?
Use this handy calculator to figure out what your game is worth.
Game Developer's Royalty Calculator
Number of copies:
An average game may sell 20,000 copies. A successful game may sell 100,000 copies. Less than 1% of games written will sell more than 100,000 copies.

Retail price per copy:
Typically, the programmer has very little control over this. The publisher may have a reason for pricing a game very low, and his reason my have nothing to do with your best interests.

Discount rate:
Games are commonly discounted to distributors by 55% or more. Your royalties are calculated based on the publisher's net. A publisher may discount your game deeply to gain a desirable distribution deal on another game, or give it to the distributor for free to pay off an old debt.

Royalty percentage:
Royalties are typically between 2%-10%, and this may be split between an entire team of programmers. If you get advances, the advances will be deducted from the royalties before you get paid anything.

Here's what you get:
Remember, this only applies to copies that sell at the full price. Typically, games are discounted after the first few weeks. If your game goes in the discount bin after a month, you will receive considerably less.

 

Commentary From A Game Developer

I gotta tell any kid thinking of getting rich some brutal facts from my own experience in writing PC games as a sole author/programmer/designer several years ago for major publishers (I did 9 games under pen names for Sierra On-Line, Adventure International, Electronic Arts, Konami and Broderbund). At least 2 of these sold in excess of 100,000 copies. All (but one) were done on royalty agreements ranging from 5-15% of net.

But in every case I had a hell of a time getting an *honest* or *any* accounting of my earned royalties from the key accounts payable person(s) at these companies. Let alone getting my royalty checks from *its in the mail* to physically in my mail box. Beware. If you're contracting as an individual with these business machines, you will get *f---*! The most common form is to send the programmer an UNSIGNED contract, asking him/her to sign and return it ... only to discover that, as time passes and the market changes or something else, the programmer ends up being contractually committed, the clock starts running, but the company cant find the right person to sign and return you a complete two-way contract.

Writing a good game, though it is getting easier every year (thanks to Fastgraph), is still a major investment of time and sweat. Count the hours and you may discover you'd do better at the Burger King. I will *NEVER* do it again without getting a big chunk of cash up front, and some contractual performance clauses that corporate attorneys do not approve, or an absolute time-and-effort fee with a high hourly rate. That is unlikely because these businesses can always find some kid(s) who are motived by the imaginative challenge as fodder for their machines.

Jack Diamond

 

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