Where are the well staffed businesses for these AVNs??

[Tokenugget]

It seems so lucrative. A team of 10-20 people could knock out a great AVN in a month. And make huge sums of money.

Take Being a Dik for instance... the thread has 40 million views on this site alone. That's what... potentially 40 million customers?

And then there's WVM... a solo creator that has 3400 patreons. At a minimun payment of 1$ that's 3400$ a month. But it's more likely an average of 10$ Each, That's 34,000 dollars a month to just one guy. And it takes him 8 months for the next update? Why not hire a team to get the job done and move the next game?

NLT producers has 12k patreons and they seem to have their shit together.

What am i missing here... they aren't Triple A games on Unreal Engine 5. Where are the investors in this gold mine? It's simple renders/images that would be easy to create for a professional team. Yet, all we have is solo creators making bank milking patreon. Mostly.

 

[Count Morado]

It seems so lucrative. A team of 10-20 people could knock out a great AVN in a month. And make huge sums of money.

Take Being a Dik for instance... the thread has 40 million views on this site alone. That's what... potentially 40 million customers?

And then there's WVM... a solo creator that has 3400 patreons. At a minimun payment of 1$ that's 3400$ a month. But it's more likely an average of 10$ Each, That's 34,000 dollars a month to just one guy. And it takes him 8 months for the next update? Why not hire a team to get the job done and move the next game?

NLT producers has 12k patreons and they seem to have their shit together.

What am i missing here... they aren't Triple A games on Unreal Engine 5. Where are the investors in this gold mine?

Not counting the fact that these games have lower chances at success as traditional small business ventures - it's a gamble. So those who can, work their full-time day jobs and do this work in their free time until the game is big enough for a long enough period of time that they feel secure enough to leave their jobs to take the risk of relying solely upon the income from the fickleness of people who enjoy these kinds of products.

Also, there is the cost of living. Yes, there are a few teams making some decent money - but there are a lot of costs and taxes (and patreon's percentage cut, and credit card processing fees, and if you're not in the United States, you lose another good percentage to currency exchange because many customers are from the US - if devs are in the US, they still lose a little percentage to exchange fees).

As for the teams you have mentioned:

• NLT might gross about US$50,000 per month
• Dr PinkCake grosses probably US$24,000 per month
• BrainDrop grosses maybe about US$18,000 per month

(estimates are based upon date collected by graphtreon tracking of patreon data)​

Cut at least half off for the fees I already mentioned, as well as any accounting fees, technology expenses, regional/province/state taxes, etc ... You're looking at middle income for 2-5 person team max, if they live in western European countries or US. We're not even taking into account marketing costs, insurance, possible legal fees, retirement savings.

Either way, that's not lucrative nor a gold mine. Also, they are the exception and not the rule. There are thousands of adult game creators on Patreon - and they are lucky if they are pulling in a couple hundred US dollars gross.

The 50th ranked Patreon Adult Game creator grosses maybe US$15,000 per month. For a 1 person team, that's damn good money ($7,500 net) - but if they have 2 or more ... they are then making less than the average incomes if they live in the countries I've already mentioned.

Finally, prior to COVID - many of these developers weren't making even a 10th what they are making now. Millions and billions of people staying home 24 hours each day for 7 days each week helped drive up this market. Now that the world is migrating back to other activities - the Patreon surge is leveling off.

 

[justpassingbyreally]

the thread has 40 million views on this site alone. That's what... potentially 40 million customers?

Not unless you also think that each download of a pirated copy equals a lost sale. If one visitor opens/refreshes a thread ten times, the counter will increase by ten.

 

[anne O'nymous]

It seems so lucrative. A team of 10-20 people could knock out a great AVN in a month. And make huge sums of money.

You should tell that to Winter Wolf or Winged Cloud. I'm sure they would be glad to hear that their studios struggle to balance their finances just because they don't have enough employees.

Take Being a Dik for instance... the thread has 40 million views on this site alone. That's what... potentially 40 million customers?

40 millions potential players on a forum that have a little less than 4.8 millions members. Wow, is it magic ?

In 4 years of existence, the game have had what ? Something like 30 updates if you count the bug fixes. Since you need to see the thread in order to have the download link, this already lower the number of potential customers to 1.3 millions.
The thread have more than 188 000 messages (plus all the nuked ones), what mean that the fans like to exchange about the game, so during those 4 years, they surely came back to the thread between two updates. With just one more visit by update, this would lower the number of potential customers to 44 000 ; near to 1 000 time less your absurd guess.

And then there's WVM... a solo creator that has 3400 patreons. At a minimun payment of 1$ that's 3400$ a month. But it's more likely an average of 10$ Each, That's 34,000 dollars a month to just one guy.

Last time

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, around 6 months ago, he was at 17K/month. Oh, and he never goes further than a bit less than 23K/month ; what is already more than honest.

And it takes him 8 months for the next update? Why not hire a team to get the job done and move the next game?

Because he would still make 17K/month, but for a less longer time and he would have to share that ? Yeah, looks like a good reason.

What am i missing here...

I'm tempted to answer: Everything.

they aren't Triple A games on Unreal Engine 5. Where are the investors in this gold mine? It's simple renders/images that would be easy to create for a professional team. Yet, all we have is solo creators making bank milking patreon. Mostly.

No, what we have is 4 711 creators among who more than 3 000 earns less than US$ 1 000/month, and around 2 000 struggle to earn US$ 100/month. But well, I'll not say again what I said few days ago regarding abandoned games.