Hello, if I wanted to make a paid game with a budget and a Steam release, where should I get my start in funding? I’m thinking about a part-time job, but we could be talking Elon Musk-level money I want to have a good cast and use Gamemaker or Unity to make new games. The setback is I don’t know where to start, so any advice?
Elon Musk has $600-700 billion, so it’s very unlikely that any game you’ll ever create will make you that much money, even if they’re really good. I may be misunderstanding that part of the post, not sure. Do you have $100 to publish on Steam? But you can make a paid game and publish it completely for free on itch.io and earn income there until you make $100 to publish on Steam? But the money is refundable once your game makes $1000 in revenue.
But a part time job is a good way to make the money to publish a game on Steam. Unity itself is completely free for you to use until you make something like $200,000 in revenue. So unless you’re going to be paying for a lot of assets or audio, Steam is probably going to be your biggest expense. Not sure if any of this helped.
I’ve made my own assets and audio but I was asking in case I find some good voice actors who want to get paid. It might not cost $700 billion to make a game, but it can feel like it sometimes. I want to make more money before I go to Steam. I have games here, but should I accept donations? I was against full payment because users of the website Scratch provided some voice work in the past, and it wouldn’t be fair to make money while they didn’t, as they can’t get access to payment. I think you’ve helped a bit. I’m thinking about a part-time job right now.
I think getting a job is the most reliable way since it’s a stable income. If you choose to get a job, I think part time is satisfactory depending on how much money you want to raise.
If you don’t want to make money off of games because of other people’s free work, that’s fine. I actually don’t think you should make a game paid if it’s a prototype of a small early on game. Only make it paid if you think it actually deserves it. Or if you’re able to contact those people again, you could find a way to split revenue with them.
The moral justification for accepting revenue is that you’ve done most of the work if you’re working individually. But I can see the ethical concept of not accepting money, it’s your choice.
But I think you should accept donations because it’s like tipping a creator for making a good game. I myself am just starting to get into game development and am interested in publishing on Steam. My family has been super supportive financially during my coding journey, one of them is willing to pay my first $100 fee on Steam. But I’m aware that not everyone’s family is going to be as supportive as mine.
You can sell shirts, too. A site called TeePublic makes it easy to do. You just upload a design and they put it on pieces of merch like shirts, hats, mugs, etc. Prices are mostly fixed, but they do all the online marketing for you for free. It took a while for me to start getting sales, but I’ve made almost $100 total so far. So that’s an option, easy income. If you’re good at making things, you can sell them off Etsy. Fiverr is a freelancing service that you can look into where you can give services to people for things you’re good at. Fiverr is a good source of income, but also hard to get your first sales because there’s so much competition. These are a few sources of income. I’m not successful on Fiverr, Patreon, but I get quite a few sales on TeePublic. Especially around the holiday season and as Artemis II gets closer to its launch date. I haven’t tried Etsy.
I haven’t received any donations, but I don’t see how you can get scammed by that. For itch.io, there are two options you can do for payout.
If you’re worried about itch.io taking your donations, I don’t think they will. Although if you don’t withdraw your money, they may start charging maintenance fees depending on how much money there.
Itch.io actually uses the open revenue sharing model where you choose what percentage of your revenue goes to itch.io (0%-100%).
What specific concerns did you have with donation scamming?
