Unreal Engine Completed Subverse [v1.1.1] [Studio Fow]

[Mr. Weeaboo]

View attachment 4530752

March is fitting, considering that's the Kickstarter campaign's beginning and the month its early access period began. Also what's like 600k times $40...cuz I'd say they made their money back and then some. Even accounting for regional pricing, that combined with early access sales at $30...that's a hefty ROI.

 

[PayneToTheMax]

March is fitting, considering that's the Kickstarter campaign's beginning and the month its early access period began. Also what's like 600k times $40...cuz I'd say they made their money back and then some. Even accounting for regional pricing, that combined with early access sales at $30...that's a hefty ROI.

24 million, give or take Steam fees.

 

[redbone89]

24 million, give or take Steam fees.

Well i hope this game did good so we can get more high quality adult games

 

[Kernist]

March is fitting, considering that's the Kickstarter campaign's beginning and the month its early access period began. Also what's like 600k times $40...cuz I'd say they made their money back and then some. Even accounting for regional pricing, that combined with early access sales at $30...that's a hefty ROI.

I am pretty sure they included backers in that 600k. And "tens of thousands new users since 1.0 release" sounds pretty bad. That's why they ask for reviews, game underperformed and they need more sales. Also, a big chunk of these "tens of thousands" bought the game on sale for half the price. My guess is since 1.0 release they made 100k or less, but if someone wants to make more educated guess by estimating purchases based on purchase to review ratio, be my guest.

 

[PayneToTheMax]

I am pretty sure they included backers in that 600k. And "tens of thousands new users since 1.0 release" sounds pretty bad. That's why they ask for reviews, game underperformed and they need more sales. Also, a big chunk of these "tens of thousands" bought the game on sale for half the price. My guess is since 1.0 release they made 100k or less, but if someone wants to make more educated guess by estimating purchases based on purchase to review ratio, be my guest.

Tens of thousands for a relatively niche porn game sounds actually pretty alright. This isn't an actual AAA game here that absolutely needs to sell millions of millions of copies to even break even. And it's not like they have a big bad publisher breathing down their necks threatening to close the studio for failure.

 

[Onarm]

I am pretty sure they included backers in that 600k. And "tens of thousands new users since 1.0 release" sounds pretty bad. That's why they ask for reviews, game underperformed and they need more sales. Also, a big chunk of these "tens of thousands" bought the game on sale for half the price. My guess is since 1.0 release they made 100k or less, but if someone wants to make more educated guess by estimating purchases based on purchase to review ratio, be my guest.

We can see exactly how many people backed since the Kickstarter is public data. It's 60k. So 540k in actual sales.

Let's assume average buyin was $30, since it was $30 for most of it's life and it's a good middle ground from the 1.0 price and the current sale price. 30x540k is $16-17 million. Add in the $2mil they made off the Kickstarter and it's about $18-$19 million in total revenue.

Dev team seems to be roughly about 14 people, 1 of which was just a contractor for the art. Another 9 or so are animators/artists/VAs that'd get paid by what they produced. Salaries even for the time it took to make the game can't have been that incredibly high.

Even if this "flopped" at 1.0, it was still a resounding success. $20 million isn't great for a major AAA studio, but it's pretty solid for a dev team of basically 4 people and several contractors. Even if they pumped a considerable amount of that back into the game, they still probably walk away with a warchest of several million to split between a relatively small group of people.

 

[Kernist]

We can see exactly how many people backed since the Kickstarter is public data. It's 60k. So 540k in actual sales.

Let's assume average buyin was $30, since it was $30 for most of it's life and it's a good middle ground from the 1.0 price and the current sale price. 30x540k is $16-17 million. Add in the $2mil they made off the Kickstarter and it's about $18-$19 million in total revenue.

Dev team seems to be roughly about 14 people, 1 of which was just a contractor for the art. Another 9 or so are animators/artists/VAs that'd get paid by what they produced. Salaries even for the time it took to make the game can't have been that incredibly high.

Even if this "flopped" at 1.0, it was still a resounding success. $20 million isn't great for a major AAA studio, but it's pretty solid for a dev team of basically 4 people and several contractors. Even if they pumped a considerable amount of that back into the game, they still probably walk away with a warchest of several million to split between a relatively small group of people.

Well, I will admit, math checks out, if they didn't blow out the money during production. Also, unless their "600k community" doesn't mean 600k players/copies sold. Game has a peak of 5k on Steam. That doesn't look like 540k sales.

 

[PayneToTheMax]

And there's the Steam stats talk. Do those even appear if you have the game set as hidden in your list? Since they pretty much added that feature for porn games

 

[Onarm]

Well, I will admit, math checks out, if they didn't blow out the money during production. Also, unless their "600k community" doesn't mean 600k players/copies sold. Game has a peak of 5k on Steam. That doesn't look like 540k sales.

As Max said, people in hidden don't show for Steam community stats. Steamspy does report 600k sales though, so I don't doubt them on it.

If I had to guess ( and hey, isn't that what this is ), EA launch was the majority of their sales, and probably accounted for 300-400k total sales over the first few months. It had a very big launch after all. It's probably been a trickle since then, and let's say 100k-200k for 1.0 launch.

That's still almost 5mil in total rev off launch. They dropped most of the dev team a year ago since I'm guessing the contracts ran out and they didn't renew. At this point it's what, DC, Sam, Tibor, and like 2-3 actual devs? 4-6 people total. Even if they only have the 1.0 cash reserves left, they still have enough to make some DLC and have decent enough cushion for next steps.

The pushyness around launch is them probably bad marketing/awkwardness more then it is an actual need for cashflow. Unless they really want to push for growth to try and transition into a Subverse 2 or something and want to see how big they can get the nest egg.

 

[Kernist]

As Max said, people in hidden don't show for Steam community stats. Steamspy does report 600k sales though, so I don't doubt them on it.

If I had to guess ( and hey, isn't that what this is ), EA launch was the majority of their sales, and probably accounted for 300-400k total sales over the first few months. It had a very big launch after all. It's probably been a trickle since then, and let's say 100k-200k for 1.0 launch.

That's still almost 5mil in total rev off launch. They dropped most of the dev team a year ago since I'm guessing the contracts ran out and they didn't renew. At this point it's what, DC, Sam, Tibor, and like 2-3 actual devs? 4-6 people total. Even if they only have the 1.0 cash reserves left, they still have enough to make some DLC and have decent enough cushion for next steps.

The pushyness around launch is them probably bad marketing/awkwardness more then it is an actual need for cashflow. Unless they really want to push for growth to try and transition into a Subverse 2 or something and want to see how big they can get the nest egg.

Numbers didn't really check out for me so I compared different sources. Most show gross revenue being between 10m and 13m (gross). Sales from past 7 days - around 7k. Ofc idk how accurate are those sites, but these numbers sound more realistic, but yeah, almost all sites claim 500-600 k sales.

 

[bcgibson]

Hidden profiles don’t stop api programs from collecting data using certificates and keys of sales.

 

[bcgibson]

It’s been shown before that devs can pump fake sales. You’ll never see these numbers match up each dev will give you a different explanation. I’ve already asked. Also paid dlc?! Haha steal that shit

 

[PayneToTheMax]

I wonder what's with the obsession about 'haha the game's a failure' here. Except for a little bit of Schadenfreude there isn't really anything to gain.

 

[Mr. Weeaboo]

I wonder what's with the obsession about 'haha the game's a failure' here. Except for a little bit of Schadenfreude there isn't really anything to gain.

The developer developed films with SFM before this, and many were bitter that
A) they stopped making them and focused on this (despite that being Patreon's and credit card companies fault)
B) the game isn't as dark as their films
C) They'd hoped the game would fail so it would deter them to go back to filmmaking (which is a silly wish, because making films again was always the plan)

 

[timmy95]

The developer developed films with SFM before this, and many were bitter that
A) they stopped making them and focused on this (despite that being Patreon's and credit card companies fault)
B) the game isn't as dark as their films
C) They'd hoped the game would fail so it would deter them to go back to filmmaking (which is a silly wish, because making films again was always the plan)

Maybe migrate to subscribestar?

 

[Mr. Weeaboo]

Maybe migrate to subscribestar?

Couple reasons, subscribestar wasn’t very big back then. I also don’t think they wanted to just sign up for another website that could pull the rug out from under them again.

 

[JoeAngel]

FOW now i am interested they done some Good Video some Was So Silly and I didn't like it but I got Couples I like [FOW-009]Nightmare - Code Valentine and [FOW-014] Severance the rest was ether to much or to silly it least for my test so does this game good or ? i will wait for you guys to tell me

 

[PayneToTheMax]

The developer developed films with SFM before this, and many were bitter that
A) they stopped making them and focused on this (despite that being Patreon's and credit card companies fault)
B) the game isn't as dark as their films
C) They'd hoped the game would fail so it would deter them to go back to filmmaking (which is a silly wish, because making films again was always the plan)

Lol, I bet the game probably made them more money than any patreon bucks they made back then.

Maybe migrate to subscribestar?

Iirc, Subscribestar was so new back then, barely anyone jumped on it.

 

[bcgibson]

I wonder what's with the obsession about 'haha the game's a failure' here. Except for a little bit of Schadenfreude there isn't really anything to gain.

Do a deep dive about them. Your missing the entire point of free forums and this website if gains is what your asking about.

 

[variaNTR]

The developer developed films with SFM before this, and many were bitter that
A) they stopped making them and focused on this (despite that being Patreon's and credit card companies fault)
B) the game isn't as dark as their films
C) They'd hoped the game would fail so it would deter them to go back to filmmaking (which is a silly wish, because making films again was always the plan)

Will FOW studio go back to making more films again after they're done with the game? That'd be nice if they do, maybe this time we can see more scenes or side stories for Subverse's girls in form of videos instead of in-game scenes too (and instead of parody films of major games/movies titles like they have done before too).

But I guess even if they plan to go back to making film that'd still be a long way from now right since they will probably update game some more and maybe make some dlcs for it first too, right?