How Much Do You Make Per Year?

[DaClown]

If the majority of your total income each year comes from your adult game development project then it is your primary income; it is your secondary otherwise even if you make nothing or actually lose money on the adult game development project.

The question is not what is your yearly income from game development. The question is from all sources derived (day job, stocks, investment properties, etc) how much is your gross income? Don't care what it is after taxes or adjust for this or that.

For example: If you make 60K$/year at your day job and 1K$/year on your hobby Patreon for your adult game dev doodles then you are in the 40,001 to 70,000$ bracket with your game dev income being secondary.

 

[anne O'nymous]

If the majority of your total income each year comes from your adult game development project then it is your primary income; it is your secondary otherwise even if you make nothing or actually lose money on the adult game development project.

Your poll is biased from the start and you'll (almost) only get "less than $10.000" answers. Your expectations regarding the adult game industry is totally fantasist and correspond in no way to the reality of the none Asian scene. Of course, there's few Western studios, like Winged Cloud by example, but they are an exception and, of course, do not match the "indie" criteria.

As for the indie scene, among the almost

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, less than 500 earn more than US$ 1.000 by month, and so qualify for your other answers. This will around 2.500 would totally false the result since, by earning less than US$ 100 by month, they in fact make (at least) 10 times less than your lower option. As for your higher option, less than 100 adult game creators earn enough to match it ; yet most of them are in fact a team, so you can expect that at max 20 people in the Western scene earn more that US$ 100.000/year.
Of course, Patreon isn't the only way for an adult game creator to fund his game, but it's the most used one and, for most of them, their main source of income. Globally speaking, only dev's who already succeeded effectively add game selling platforms to their options. The others tend to not see the interest of adding more constraints to their low income.

 

[fidless]

You should add less than 5000$, cause choosing 10k is a bit overstretch for me lol.

 

[DaClown]

Your poll is biased from the start and you'll (almost) only get "less than $10.000" answers. Your expectations regarding the adult game industry is totally fantasist and correspond in no way to the reality of the none Asian scene. Of course, there's few Western studios, like Winged Cloud by example, but they are an exception and, of course, do not match the "indie" criteria.

As for the indie scene, among the almost

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, less than 500 earn more than US$ 1.000 by month, and so qualify for your other answers. This will around 2.500 would totally false the result since, by earning less than US$ 100 by month, they in fact make (at least) 10 times less than your lower option. As for your higher option, less than 100 adult game creators earn enough to match it ; yet most of them are in fact a team, so you can expect that at max 20 people in the Western scene earn more that US$ 100.000/year.
Of course, Patreon isn't the only way for an adult game creator to fund his game, but it's the most used one and, for most of them, their main source of income. Globally speaking, only dev's who already succeeded effectively add game selling platforms to their options. The others tend to not see the interest of adding more constraints to their low income.

So the majority of respondents as of today (6) are claiming to have total income from all sources (including day jobs) of less than 10K$/year. Which is poverty wages.

 

[fidless]

So the majority of respondents as of today (6) are claiming to have total income from all sources (including day jobs) of less than 10K$/year. Which is poverty wages.

Broke and proud.

 

[DaClown]

You should add less than 5000$, cause choosing 10k is a bit overstretch for me lol.

You are claiming that you make less than 10K$/year from all sources. This is correct? Gross not net?

You do not state in your reply whether or not game dev income is primary or secondary.

 

[fidless]

You are claiming that you make less than 10K$/year from all sources. This is correct? Gross not net?

You do not state in your reply whether or not game dev income is primary or secondary.

You're asking so you can come back with
" take your work and using it as a portfolio to get a job with the better established industry because you're under performing." like in previous thread?
But you fail to see Hgame making is not comparable to jobs at some companies and money is not the main attraction for devs. If it was only just for money, every single dev would be making incests harem games (popular) without giving a second thought about anything else. I'd rather take a job as a janitor and call myself "William MacDougal".

 

[Girm Ork]

Actually, for a newbie developer, it is hard to make ANY profit from gamedev. In the first year, it is common to lose money, even if it is just a cost for your living. Obviously, you can't make money with 0 patrons.
So I expect a LOT of "Less than 10,000$ per year" votes.

 

[anne O'nymous]

So the majority of respondents as of today (6) are claiming to have total income from all sources (including day jobs) of less than 10K$/year.

I'm sure that most people read your poll as regarding the game income, not the whole income of game authors. I mean, what sick person would want to know how much they earn with their regular job ? It's personal and totally irrelevant on this forum.
They earn enough to own a computer, have an access to internet, have enough free time to make a game, and, for those who use it, buy some assets for Daz3D. By looking at the game, still for those using Daz3D, we can also guess if they earn a little more or a little less, by the quality of the renders and the number of assets in the game (or the use of the basic cheapest ones). That's what we know, and it's already more than what we need to know.

Which is poverty wages.

You should try to be more consistent. You can't, in another thread, try to lecture me about the fact that living cost isn't the same all around the world, then few hours later decide, in this thread, that poverty wages are the same in all countries.
To keep the India example that you used somewhere else, US$ 10k/year is around 200 time the minimal wage ; so, way above poverty wages in this country. And you don't necessarily need to go this far, in Poland, by example, it's around 1.6 times the minimal wages, so once again above poverty wages.


In the end, you only prove that I'm right when saying that your expectations are pure fantasies. You know nothing about the reality of the adult game scene outside of Asia, and still try to give lessons to people who are part of it.
The vast majority of authors in the scene don't care about the money, they want to make a game, that's all. Many of them said it to you, yet you don't care and look at them like aliens, trying to force the reality into your expectations, instead of correcting your point of view.
But it's just the truth, globally speaking, they don't seek for a living income, and will already be happy if they earn enough to cover the costs of their game. Which lead to another problem in your poll, the lack of negative values. Because yes, many authors spend more on their game than they earn with it ; especially, but not only, those who start.
For a Daz3D game using Ren'py, between the price of the assets, the electricity bill, and potentially a little update of the computer, you can expect a debt between US$ 1.000 and US$ 2.000 when the game is released for the first time. If the game is more ambitious, it can easily go up to US$ 5.000 and more. With, more or less, half of the authors earning less than US$ 1.500 by year, and the electricity bill running, when the game will be finished, most of them will still have spend more than they've earned.

 

[moskyx]

Not to mention that, ironically, he's creating a megathread on gaming-dev by indexing basically every development-related topic ever created on this forum (this very same thread will be indexed too, I guess). A huge effort he's making for free (heh) taking advantage of other's work and ideas in order to guide wannabe devs onto the right track for success. He'd be better off investing all this time and resources in a better-paid consulting job (I'm sure data would show that average income for gaming/business consultants in the US is some decent figure). You shouldn't undervalue your work, man

 

[DaClown]

Actually, for a newbie developer, it is hard to make ANY profit from gamedev. In the first year, it is common to lose money, even if it is just a cost for your living. Obviously, you can't make money with 0 patrons.
So I expect a LOT of "Less than 10,000$ per year" votes.

You expect that most developers have no other income than their game development project?

Cause in other threads, people have asserted that most game devs have better paying day jobs and don't care about the income they get from their game dev projects. Some even assert being business owners.

 

[Girm Ork]

You expect that most developers have no other income than their game development project?

I think it can be different for different countries. It is easy to find a decent part-time job if you are living in US or Japan. With it, you can have some money and some time for gamedev.
But if you are living in India, Nigeria, or even in some European countries like Belarus, then all part-time jobs are sh*tty. It is impossible to be productive in gamedev if your day job's pay rate is $1-$2 per hour.

 

[DaClown]

I think it can be different for different countries. It is easy to find a decent part-time job if you are living in US or Japan. With it, you can have some money and some time for gamedev.
But if you are living in India, Nigeria, or even in some European countries like Belarus, then all part-time jobs are sh*tty. It is impossible to be productive in gamedev if your day job's pay rate is $1-$2 per hour.

Now this might sound kind of sarcastic or ironic, but it isn't. I'm just stating the obvious, and the question isn't rhetorical.

So what you're saying is that the majority of the possible adult game developers live entirely outside the currently prevalent markets and generally are not in fact people with high paying tech jobs?

 

[Obscure]

Bleh, I forgot to convert the weak Canadian dollar and had to change it.
Games is a secondary income so far... If you can call it an income. Really more of an investment.

 

[Girm Ork]

So what you're saying is that the majority of the possible adult game developers live entirely outside the currently prevalent markets and generally are not in fact people with high paying tech jobs?

I don't think it is the majority (the majority of devs is probably from Japan and China), but a huge part of Steam hentai games are actually made in third-world countries. They all translated into English and have English titles. So, you might think that the game was made in US, but the developer is living in India.

 

[fidless]

Now this might sound kind of sarcastic or ironic, but it isn't. I'm just stating the obvious, and the question isn't rhetorical.

So what you're saying is that the majority of the possible adult game developers live entirely outside the currently prevalent markets and generally are not in fact people with high paying tech jobs?

I imagine Hgame development is a lot less appealing for people living in the USA, Sweeden (taxes -50%!), etc. because of weak income for doing it as a full-time job, for the long term commitment. That's something worth considering.

high paying tech jobs

You think "high tech" codders/programmers will be making games using renpy/rpgm which is the majority of Hgames?

 

[recreation]

Okay, this will be the last time I'll answer to one of these topics.
I'll give a simple example:
I live in a first world country in Europe, in my last job I earned roughly 1800 USD per month as an ordinary worker, this was due to me changing jobs and having no experience. Prior to this I earned ~2500 USD per month while working only 32h per week, this is considered a good income over here, and still if I had worked 40 hours per week, it would have been just 30k per year and I know a lot of people who make a lot less money (in my country and outside of my country).
Funnily enough, it's considered lower than average in my country even though the majority of ppl earn less than 3k a month.

If you want somewhat realistic statistics, look at the

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annual household income, and most importantly look at the global average at the bottom of the first list.

 

[mickydoo]

Can we add fuck all to the poll?

 

[recreation]

Can we add fuck all to the poll?

How much average fuck is that?

 

[DaClown]

Can we add fuck all to the poll?

At this point, a new poll and thread would need to be created to accurately reflect any gradient of response below 10K$/year. "Less than 10K$/year" is for the purposes of this poll "fuck all".