Posted February 20, 2013
I posted this on our game's subforum as well, but I thought it would be of general interest to the GOG community.
A big question everyone has is - how big is GOG compared to Steam? Based on our experience, it's a viable competitor that looks like it's on the rise. I love Steam as much as the next guy, but I love GOG's DRM-free philosophy, and their developer support is top-notch. As a developer, it's great to see there's more than one game in town.
We just posted a full sales stat breakdown for our game Defender's Quest on Gamasutra, comparing sales from all sources, including Steam and GOG:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/186940/defenders_quest_by_the_numbers_.php
Bottom line:
Gross: $286,646
Sales: 40,451
We would never have had the confidence to do this without other developers who have shared their stats in the past, so it's only fair we share our numbers now.
Chief takeaways:
1) Direct sales are still #2 source of overall revenue (but GOG's sales velocity is higher)
2) GOG is a *real* competitor to Steam
3) Browser based demo was key to our success
4) Desura/Impulse were a disappointment
Your results may vary, this is just one data point and there's still no proof that we have any idea what we're doing. Hopefully this information is of interest to someone!
A big question everyone has is - how big is GOG compared to Steam? Based on our experience, it's a viable competitor that looks like it's on the rise. I love Steam as much as the next guy, but I love GOG's DRM-free philosophy, and their developer support is top-notch. As a developer, it's great to see there's more than one game in town.
We just posted a full sales stat breakdown for our game Defender's Quest on Gamasutra, comparing sales from all sources, including Steam and GOG:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/186940/defenders_quest_by_the_numbers_.php
Bottom line:
Gross: $286,646
Sales: 40,451
We would never have had the confidence to do this without other developers who have shared their stats in the past, so it's only fair we share our numbers now.
Chief takeaways:
1) Direct sales are still #2 source of overall revenue (but GOG's sales velocity is higher)
2) GOG is a *real* competitor to Steam
3) Browser based demo was key to our success
4) Desura/Impulse were a disappointment
Your results may vary, this is just one data point and there's still no proof that we have any idea what we're doing. Hopefully this information is of interest to someone!
Post edited February 20, 2013 by larsiusprime