The Economics of the €20 Indie Game
A €19.99 price tag can make an indie game look deceptively profitable. In reality, platform fees, taxes, refunds, discounts and development costs all reduce the studio's actual return. More importantly, the difficult part isn't setting the price; it's reaching enough people for that price to matter. For an indie studio, the economics of a game are ultimately the economics of building an audience.
When I think about the economics of an indie game, I often start with a deliberately simple question: what happens when you sell a game for €19.99? On paper, the answer looks attractive. Sell 1,000 copies and you've generated roughly €20,000 in gross consumer spending. Sell 5,000 and you're approaching €100,000. For a small studio, those numbers can make a project look like a straightforward calculation.
It isn't.
The €19.99 that a customer sees on a storefront isn't the amount that eventually reaches the developer. Taxes, platform...
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