PC, Linux and Mac hit making huge sums for Swedish indie developer Markus Persson
Currently the topic of furious enthusing on the part of the dev sector's fashionistas, an indie game called Minecraft is causing a bit of a stir online. So much so, in fact, that right now it’s netting its creator in the region of $350,000 every single day.
And with no distribution or retail chain concerns, every penny is going back to the game’s creator.
The €9.95 title, which is the work of Swedish programmer Markus Persson, is currently selling at the rate of around one copy every three seconds.
Part of its success has come from the fact that it has been crafted using open source code, including the Lightweight Java Game Library, which has made it particularly easily portable. The game is currently available to download for Mac, PC and Linux.
Lots of chatter has surrounded the title of late, which dumps players into a visually simple virtual world and leaves them to find resources and construct tools to ensure their survival.
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Single player and multiplayer versions are currently available. And work continues on Minecraft, too, which should be moving into a beta phase in the near future.
“It all feels unreal,” Persson is quoted as saying by Texyt. “I thought I could make a living from the game, but I did not expect to become rich.”
He also claims to have turned down job offers from the likes of Valve and Bungie.
The game can be downloaded here.
And this is why all these dev companies spending 3+ years on a game (mmo or not) is stupidity.
Throw out a simple game, sell it cheap, and iterate.
There's plenty of room on PC for more games like this.
Also, are you sure it's 350k a day?
6714 bought in 24 hours = €66804 ($90k) per day, €24,386,460 per year
1 copy every three seconds is 28800 copies a day, which is 288000 euros per day, give or take, and it prob sells more in some seconds, still a hefty pay day in anybodies books.
It's possible. There are 4 or 5 one-man Indies making big money nowadays. Garry's Mod, Beat Hazard, Braid and Nation Red are all one-man created and take up to 100,000 USD a month on Steam alone. Last month I checked Nation Red during a Steam salesold more than Modern Warfare 2, which is around 200K USD+ in 3-4 days. Not a bad income for these guys!
1 copy every three seconds is 28800 copies a day (24hrs), which is 288000 euros per day.
1 euro = 1.36036 USD
1.36036 USD x 288,000.00 EUR = 391,783.48 USD every 24 hrs
He's made 350k SINCE HE STARTED SELLING IT, it's not what he makes in a day.
Whoever wrote this article was either seriously misinformed or a full blown retard.
That's > $350.000 per day.
Woohoo!
Well this is an interesting development...
@burningpie
you are incorrect in this case.
@BurningPie: sorry, but you're the "seriously misinformed or a full blown retard" person in this thread; he's indeed making > 350k a day, not total. In total, he has already made around 6 million USD; he's very open about the number of copies he's selling.
As I said in the 2nd comment. He's not making $330k a day.
http://minecraft.net/stats.jsp
It's 11177 sales in the last 24 hours @ 10 euros. It was 6714 sales when I posted.
= Not $330k a day.
It's not rocket science. It's simple math that some people can't seem to grasp.
Sales are already slowing, which is to be expected. The 350K quote is from the best selling day.
Right now, he's selling around 11,000 copies per day which is of course good, but less than half of what's reported in the article.
Still nice sales for an Indie dev. but not special.I follow Indie sales on Steam; as I mentioned Nation Red on Steam outsold Mafia during release on Steam mid-August. That's also 10,000+ copies per 24-hour period. During last week's sale Garry's Mod has done almost as well but for a longer period so let's calm down people!
