Indie studio sold $560K on Steam but founders kept $15K a year

The gross figure covers five years of sales of two games: Northend Tower Defense and Deepstone Rift, which is still in Early Access (sold while unfinished). In a video explaining the numbers, Develioğlu said 53.3% of sales came from players in China, a huge share for a small studio.

That success in China was a double-edged sword. He described Chinese buyers as very demanding and said the refund rate there was far higher than usual, which brings us to the first big deduction.

Here’s the chain from gross sales to take-home pay, using Develioğlu’s figures:

1. Gross sales: $560,000.
2. Refunds: $134,000, a refund rate of 22%, well above the 10 to 15% he says is normal. Left: $426,000.
3. Steam’s fee: Valve takes 30% until a game passes $10 million in sales, so Northend paid the full rate, about $127,000. Left: roughly $297,000.
4. US withholding tax: 5%, reduced because Thailand, where he lives, has a tax treaty with the US. Left: about $287,300.
5. Publisher: $115,000 to an Asian publisher that handled PR, distribution and marketing in China, Japan and South Korea. Left: about $172,000.
6. Thai tax: 15%, or around $26,000. Left: $146,000.
7. Split between two founders: $73,000 each over five years, or roughly $15,000 a year.

That’s before any costs of actually running a studio, such as software, hardware or contractors, which the breakdown doesn’t detail.

Steam’s 30% deserves a word. Players love Valve’s store for features like the Workshop, where fans share mods, and for avoiding some of the unpopular moves other stores have made. But its standard cut has drawn steady criticism, because the discount only kicks in at sales levels that almost no small studio will reach. For a two-person team, Steam’s share ended up close to the amount lost to refunds.

The publisher’s cut is the most debated line. Develioğlu didn’t spell out the exact terms, possibly because of a nondisclosure agreement, and the fee appeared to work on a sliding scale. If it applied only to sales in the regions the publisher handled, it works out to roughly 35 to 40% of net income from those sales.

Was it worth it? The fact that most sales came from China suggests the publisher did reach players there. One analysis of his numbers ran a different scenario, in which the studio sold without a publisher, saw fewer refunds and made just 15% of its sales in Asia, and ended up with nearly the same net amount. In other words, the publisher’s fee and the extra sales it brought in roughly cancelled each other out.

Refunds hurt in a different way. Steam lets players return games easily, which is good for buyers but means a studio can lose a fifth of its revenue before any fees. The refund rate in China has been backed up by third-party figures, old and new, so this isn’t just one studio’s bad luck.

For players, the takeaway is that the price you pay is not what the developer gets. On a typical indie game, the platform, tax offices and partners each take a slice before the creators see anything. Leaving a review, wishlisting a game and thinking twice before a casual refund all make a real difference to tiny teams.

For anyone thinking of going indie, a few lessons stand out:

• Plan around net revenue, not gross sales. In this case, the two founders together kept only about a quarter of what players spent.
• Read publisher contracts closely and model whether the extra reach outweighs the cut.
• Check tax treaties where you live. They can save a meaningful slice of US withholding.
• Expect refund rates to vary a lot by country.

Develioğlu lived in Iraq before moving to Thailand, and he points out that $15,000 a year is still above the Thai average wage of around $5,280. That lets him make games full time, which is more than many indie developers manage.

Still, the gap between headline sales and real income is striking. Half a million dollars in sales, he notes, didn’t buy a Lamborghini. It bought a full-time job making games and a car that’s well over a decade old.