- Feb 12, 2020
- 198
- 482
There are bigger games that had less funding that had significantly more development over the time period. Compare this to say, Oh So Hero! which used to have less funding (although its surpassed it by now).Doesn't look like they're making that much to start with.
Not sure there's really any to hoard.
While I'm not sure how well they're actually doing on steam, itch, and merch... Patreon shows BunFan making about $7700/mo. After patreon fees but before taxes that's ~$6500. Bunfan appears to be an LLC in Florida, so 5.5% corp tax and some amount of sales tax, down to ~$6150 to pay people with, assuming they don't spend money on anything else. Taxes for paying people, ~13% for FICA and FUTA, and ~2.7% state in Florida, now we're down to ~$5175. Assuming the discussion on discord about even split among employees, which there appear to be 4-7 (i'll go with 5 for easy math), they could be seeing up to $1000/mo before they pay their own income taxes, as well as pay fees for taking disbursements from patreon.
So ballpark, if there are 5 employees working full time, though I'd guess nobody's actually full time on this project, they'd be making less than US minimum wage.
For context, if Kom just took all the money from patreon and didn't pay anyone, he'd be seeing $62k a year. The median/25th percentile for an entry level video game artist, 75% would make more than you, is $80k a year. So yeah, I'd agree that he seems to be a poor businessman, but while there's drama here I don't know what people here are going on about.
This is a rhythm game; you make charts, some animations, and probably some "cutscene slides" for the story. I sincerely doubt they're going the FNF route of full on animated cutscenes. And hey, I realize art and coding takes time.
But they've had time.
And anytime I get a notification from their discord it's about them pushing their merch. I used to support their Patreon until I realized that fuck all had been added in like 8 months and if they're this far behind they probably will never finish all the promises they made.
I really like the concept. I really like the art. I want to trust their team, but that trust died over the years its taken them to get past... what do they even have 4 full levels yet? Reminder that they were supposed to be done with Act 2 last year, according to their roadmap. The response to this being pointed out was "yeah that didn't work out lol."
Not to mention the Patreon goals that were reached, and then taken down because people kept asking about them.
I just... people are paying for this. It's one thing if you're a regular pirate bitching about a free product, but the people who put their support behind this project deserve something more than an uncolored level in 8 months.
They need someone to be organizing this because it does not need to take this long. It toes the line between malicious and incompetence. When money is involved, it's a completely different beast. I wouldn't care at all if it hadn't advertised its Patreon goals and given a timeline.