The Void Rains Upon Her Heart [1], Fear and Hunger [2] are two examples. You'll look at both of these games and think 'wait, they're actually successful, what's the deal?' and not see the whole story, which is why I linked the charts. Both of these games launched to little to no success, with few (highly positive) reviews. What changed is that deep into their lifespan (~3-4 years after release), a popular youtuber did a video on the game, and as a result it suddenly blew up in popularity and carried that momentum forward. You can in fact see the exact point on the charts where that occurred.
There are a lot of games exactly like that, but haven't had the person with the viewerbase to boost them up. Nor will they ever.
I hope that this doesn't come across as moving the goalposts, but for me it's a given that popular Youtubers can multiply the success of a game, and that this depends to a large extent on luck. For me, the crux of the matter in discussions about game development profitability and survivorship bias is not how much luck influences the maximum possible success of a game.
For me the relevant question is: If you develop a carefully crafted, fun game based on a game concept you have reason to believe will have a decently sized target audience, will you make enough money for a living with some kind of predictability, or does even this depend on luck?
Now when looking at The Void Rains Upon Her Heart, I'd like to know the sales figures before the jump in popularity. You can filter Steam reviews to the period before the game's popularity surged in June 2023. At that time, there were 561 reviews (or 338 reviews for copies sold via Steam). Using the common sales estimation trick of multiplying the number of reviews with 50, we get approximately 28,000 (or 17,000) owners before June 2023. I think the price fluctuated between $9.99 and $6.99. Assuming that after Steam's 30% cut and taxes there are about $3 left on average for each sold copy, then 3 * 25,000 = $75,000. According to the game's credits on MobyGames it was made by a single person. Depending on how long he took, maybe it is reasonable to assume that the game was en route to profitability anyway?
>There are a lot of games exactly like that, but haven't had the person with the viewerbase to boost them up. Nor will they ever.
Such as? Just name one so we can all know. This is your time to help them out no matter how little and there are "a lot" apparently so it shouldn't be hard.
Hex of Steel. Turn based hex wargame, very niche but with a fairly large worldwide community into such games. Only the solo developer is doing plays on youtube and twitch. The game has been seeing a slow upward sales trend as the niche wargame community realizes how good it is. If you've played SSI and Avalon Hill hex games as a kid you should get this.
That is an indie success, almost 400 reviews for that price is good for a solo developer, he can live well on that as long as he continues to create and sell content for.
Failures are games with 50 or less reviews or a bit more if they have much lower price points, there aren't many gems at that level. Note that a large majority of indie game developers don't live in USA, indie gaming isn't dominated by American developers unlike the regular software industry.
Hardcore games are much more likely to convert plays to reviews. Many of the units would have shifted during the 50% sales.
The game is multiplayer which is a whole other layer of complexity.
Based on my experience in this market, I really doubt the author is happy with the outcome as anything other than a stepping stone to something more sustainable.
I think you're an order of magnitude too low setting the bar at 50 for professional developers where this is their full time job - even outside of the US.
Shout out to All Day Dying. 76 reviews. Also both of Colorgrave's games. One way to look for interesting stuff is SteamDB > 50 reviews and over 80%. For example Wild Dogs, Downpurr and Vetrix look cool.
There are a lot of games exactly like that, but haven't had the person with the viewerbase to boost them up. Nor will they ever.
[1] https://steamdb.info/app/790060/charts/
[2] https://steamdb.info/app/1002300/charts/