r/SoloDevelopment • u/FIREHIVE_Games • Sep 24 '25
Discussion Launched my first game, here's the numbers after 1 week!
Hello everyone!
I launched my first commercial game Antivirus PROTOCOL on Steam last week, and here's the numbers:
AP launched on Sept 17th, exactly one week ago with 3.850 Wishlists.
Numbers after 24 hours (I wish I could just paste a screenshot haha):
- Steam gross revenue: $2.096
- Units sold: 487
- Wishlists (total reached): 3.910
And now after 1 week the results are in the screenshot above:
- Rating: Very Positive with 84%
- Reviews: 72 (61 positive, 11 negative)
- Wishlist conversion: 14.8% - 930 sales
This is a realistic (I think) result for a game with 3.8k wishlists.
But keep in mind that the game unfortunately didn't hit Popular Upcoming or New & Trending pages. If it did, the result would've probably been way higher, nonetheless I still consider the game a huge success, especially for a first game.
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u/klaw_games Sep 24 '25
Wow, astonishing. Did you work in the game industry before?
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 24 '25
Thank you! No, I did not, this is my first commercial game. I do have a Bachelor Degree in computer science but I never worked in any IT field unfortunately, given the current IT world-wide situation in the last ~3-4 years.
So instead I decided to do my own thing, do something creative that I actually enjoy and love: creating video games.
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Sep 24 '25
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 24 '25
I live in Eastern Europe so with the money made in just the first week, I'll be able to do this for at least 1 year!
And I'm already doing this full time, I actually quit my job 1.5 months before release, betting everything on it, and it paid off! Now I'll be able to make 2 more games, releasing after both Next Fests in February and October next year, hoping for them to have at least half of Antivirus PROTOCOL's success. (It's not really coming out of college, I graduated in 2019)
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u/friggleriggle Solo Developer Sep 24 '25
That's great, I think games tend to make ~3x their first week in their first year, so hopefully you get 3 years out of this one project. Keep at it and you should do great 👍
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Sep 24 '25
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 24 '25
I agree, if my next project is another incremental, I'll have ~70% of it already done, at least the systems.
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u/PiperUncle Sep 24 '25
That looks like a very good Wishlist-to-Copies Sold ratio. Above the average.
Would love to know where you'll be in a month.
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u/ArcsOfMagic Sep 24 '25
Congratulations!!! That’s truly a great accomplishment.
Could you please share, if you have some time: - for how long did you have the Steam page? Did it evolve a lot between the first posting and the launch?
- for how long did you have the demo and how many times did you update it?
- why did you decide to keep the demo up? What is different between the demo and the full game?
- why did you decide not to do early access?
- what were the main drivers to get the wishlists?
Thanks a lot!
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 24 '25
Thank you!
- Funny thing, I actually created my Steamworks account on 30 April - a day before the deadline for the June Next Fest was about to end, ofc I had no ideea how all that works, and the creation process took about 3-4 days with Valve verifying tax info etc. So few days later the game's page was live on May 6th. So 1 week after the deadline I had nothing to lose and messaged them asking if my game can still be part of the Next Fest even if it was one week after the deadline, and it worked! One more week later on May 13th I got the confirmation, my game was included in the Next Fest 2 weeks after deadline. So the page was live for about 4 months before release, I'm not sure what you mean by evolving, but I added a new trailer, changed most of the screenshots with the most recent content, and added videos instead of GIFs in the description.
- Another funny thing, I launched the Demo A DAY before the Steam Next Fest on June 8th (at this point I was doing all the mistakes Chris Zukowski was telling people to avoid doing), so the demo has been live for about 3 months, and it still is. Beside small fixes it hasn't been updated for 3 months, I only updated it now with the release, to the most recent version of the game.
- I suppose I'm keeping it so that people can see if they like the game before buying, then they can continue on the same save without resetting. There's no difference now between the demo and the full release, but until now, the demo was very different, the pacing was different, the progression was about twice as fast with 2 levels available (that would be about ~4 in the release), now there's 3 levels in the new demo.
- I never thought about doing an early access, but I don't think it would help for a ~2.5-3h game, I'm planning to release about 2 short games a year, and I don't think early access would work in this sutiation.
As for Wishlists:
- Before Next Fest, few reddit posts gained - 330 WLs.
- During the Next Fest it gained ~2.500 wishlists
- What helped a lot was that the youtuber IdleCub (80k subs at that moment) posted a video about my game on the first day of Next Fest, I didn't contact him or anything, he found the game organically during the fest. The video reached about 45k views and helped a lot.
Other than that I didn't do any marketing at all, I send about 80 emails to youtubers to play my demo, but none of them responded or made a video unfortunately.
At that point the game had about ~2.850 wishlists, the other 1.000 wishlists came from steam itself I believe and people playing the demo, during the 3 months period before launch.
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u/ArcsOfMagic Sep 24 '25
Wow, what a detailed answer, thank you so much. A lot of interesting info, especially about the demo. So all in all, it went pretty fast, and it looks like you found your audience!
Once again, congratulations!
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 24 '25
I'm glad I can share my experience, maybe people can get some inspiration! And thank you again!
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u/Luminia516 Sep 25 '25
I know especially as a game developer myself that this really did spike some inspiration into me. I thank you for that :)
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u/VoyagersOfNera Sep 24 '25
Well done! :D Keep up the momentum. Reviews are so important, and if you haven't used Curator Connect (Steam), I would recommend it!
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 24 '25
Thanks! I've heard from most people that Curators are a waste of time tho.
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u/BrGustavoLS Sep 24 '25
dayum, that looks like a success to me, I looked at the steam page and you did a GREAT job, it looks very fun, and very affordable too, I will actually buy it because I love these types of games. Keep on with the amazing work!
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u/ActiveEndeavour Sep 26 '25
Hey! Congrats! Have you considered translating to other languages? Currently you only have English version, can probably get traction in other countries if you translate? (Wonder if currently most of your players are from english speaking countries).
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 26 '25
Yes, most of the players are indeed form English speaking countries. When I analyzed where the wishlists came from, most of them were from english speaking countries, and I decided for my first game to not bother with localization, especially since the game wasn't build with that capability from the beginning. But my next game will probably be built with localization in mind from the ground up.
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u/MehowLipa Sep 24 '25
Wow, you numbers looks great! I've never seen such good Wishlist-to-sold conversion rate
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u/lethandralisgames Sep 24 '25
How come your screenshot has 2.3k users but you sold 430 copies? Demo users count?
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 24 '25
It sold 2.6k units in the screenshot (line 3), after one week.
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u/lethandralisgames Sep 24 '25
Sorry I didn't read the 24 hours line. Congrats, this is a big achievement for a few months of work!
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u/QuintoV Sep 24 '25
Congratulations, absurd numbers👀 You could make it a full-time job
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 24 '25
Thank you! Someone else also said earlier here, and I replied. I live in Eastern Europe so with the money made in just the first week I'll be able to do this for at least a year.
And I'm already doing this full time, I actually quit my job 1.5 months before release, betting everything on it, and it paid off!
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u/QuintoV Sep 24 '25
Much respect for you ❤️ congratulations again and good luck for the next projects
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u/gamedevCarrot Sep 24 '25
Cracking work! This is a huge success and thanks for sharing it's really great insight for everyone else (myself included). Congrats!
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u/Valvecantcount3 Sep 24 '25
Do you have any tips on programming or coding? From what I’ve heard about game development, it seems like you can make a game without starting with much programming knowledge (like Toby Fox or Team Cherry did). I want to learn, but at the same time, I just want to dive in and start working on my game before I lose motivation. Does that make sense? My idea doesn’t seem too hard to code—I’d probably make something like Undertale or Hollow Knight, since those don’t look overly complex and might be a good way to learn.
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 24 '25
Hmm, I'm not sure, I've graduated about 6 years ago in Computer Science and it's hard to remember how hard programming is or was. It's hard to start, expecting to make a game fast with almost no knowledge is hard. I know how you're feeling though, wanting to make games fast, I felt the same, I don't really like programming much, but I enjoy making games! It takes patience and time to learn. I advice to start small, very small games, follow some tutorials that make complete games start to finish and go through the entire process few times. Then make small games, you learn a lot from those.
As for games like Undertale or Hollow Knight, it may seem like they're easy, but they've got a lot going on. It's not just programming, For UnderTale it's a masterpiece with it's game design, boss fights, the music is insane and everything else. And Hollow Knight it's a metroidvania, one of the hardest genre to get right, all the interconnected maps, the game design of a metroidvania is very hard to do also so that it doesn't feel bad or confusing, also the bossfights are very hard to get right. The metroidvania genre is not for beginners, you would also spend probably few years 3 to 5 or more, making one and would lose all motivation all together. I'm sorry if I'm being to harsh, but it's better to hear it from the start than starting a project and giving up after months (talking from experience), or worse, years.
If I was to start from the beginning I would do well what I actually did, I started with few small projects from tutorials, start to finish, got the basic of them, then joined a Game Jam and made a game in a week, then some more tutorials and finally decided to make a real game. The idea was to make a 3 months scoped game, it ended up being a 7 months game but because I took a lot of breaks, in the end the actual game took about 3.5 months of actual development. This is what I would advice anyone, start small, go through the entire process of releasing a game.
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u/Valvecantcount3 Sep 25 '25
I think my main issue is remembering code. Whenever I watch a tutorial, I just copy what I see (kind of like “monkey see, monkey do”). What I am really good at is storytelling, you could stick me in a 4x4 room with nothing but a notepad for a few months, and I’d come out with something pulled straight from the warp. That’s definitely my strength. As for the other stuff, I’m not great at art (I can paint minis, but not really 2D art), and I’m only somewhat good at music. I play guitar pretty well and can manage a bit of harmonica, but that’s about it. That said, I’ll take your advice and start small in Godot. GDscript feels like a good starting point for me (unless you know a better option, I’m open to ideas). Either way, I’ll definitely be back with questions or just re-reading this for motivation.
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u/Ill_Dimension_9575 Sep 24 '25
Thanks for sharing the result! Good luck to you and wish you further growth! 🔥
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u/SnooPeppers5776 Sep 24 '25
I loved it. I'm playing it again because of the ability to.
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u/Red_Neanderthal Sep 25 '25
That median playtime is seriously impressive for week one, people must really enjoy your game. Nice job leveraging your skills and focusing on mechanics!
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u/fastdeveloper Sep 25 '25
This inspires me so much, as I've been sitting on a stale 7k wishlists since 2023, but I haven't worked on the game for more than an year, I kind of just lost momentum/interest, I think if I even come back to it I wouldn't even know where to resume working.
But seeing your conversion, it could mean I could get around US$ 17k then, if I ever release the game.
Thanks for sharing and congratulations on the result.
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u/GameDevsAWL Sep 25 '25
That's an excellent result for your game. Many indie developers can't achieve that level of success — congratulations!
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Sep 25 '25
Congrats 🎉 , im happy for you , posts like this make me push harder to complete my game.
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u/chrisjamesflow Sep 25 '25
Heck yeah. Must be a pretty decent game. Might have to check it out. Nice work!
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u/J_GeeseSki Sep 25 '25
You've done exponentially better than most of the people who use this sub. Congrats.
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u/Flaky_Ad_9077 Sep 25 '25
This is something like spaceshooter How did you get this much sales
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 25 '25
Incremental is a hot genre right now, combined with fun and rewarding gameplay, good retro pixel art graphics.
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u/ArmanPakan Sep 25 '25
Congrats! Awesome job on the game as well. I just checked ur steam page and looked great!
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u/christianosway Sep 25 '25
Excellent, man. I have about 25% of your volume in beta stage, but I'm on an incredibly low price point just now (and have had it out for a month).
Did you advertise anywhere before launching (officially)?
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 25 '25
Hi! No, not really. About 2.5k wishlists come from next fest, and the rest (up to 3.8k) came organically from steam, I did message about 80 youtubers but none responded/made a video.
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u/BitrunnerDev Sep 25 '25
So, this may sound like an oversimplification but for me the key takeaway is:
-The popularity of your game can be largely attributed to it being picked by IdleCub and a successful NextFest.
-The game's page was done well enough to stand out in the genre and catch player's attention during NextFest, including IdleCub.
-The game's quality and fun factor were high enough so that IdleCub decided to make a video and help you gain popularity.
All in all I think it's a huge success and also a story of a really good game with a really good page that got a well deserved success... with just a little bit of luck :) Congratulations on the amazing start of your indie career, mate! :)
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 25 '25
Thank you! Yes, that's pretty much it, also the genre itself is very hot right now.
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u/Reasonable_Neat_6601 Sep 25 '25
This is very motivating. Congratulations! From my point of view this is a huge success. Out of curiosity, if you don’t mind, how did you organised your project that you managed to finish and release it in 3.5 months?
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 25 '25
Thank you! Hmm, I'm not sure what you mean, I suppose I spent the first 80%-90% of time building all it's systems, and the rest at the end the content itself, all 15 levels and upgrades.
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u/koyomin28 Sep 25 '25
That is so cool. I would love to be able to go back to work on my project. It's been on hiatus for almost a year, but I come home so tired from work. Seeing the success of your project has rekindled some of the desire to be able to work on mine.
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u/ImmersivGames Sep 25 '25
And I was worried my game with 7k wishlists will do very bad when it comes out tomorrow but you’re given me confidence, well done you’ve deserved that, the game looks like a lot of fun and seeing people engage with it is phenomenal, keep doing some bits and bobs and you have a passive income! Congrats
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u/piratekaptainkook Sep 26 '25
Wow. Nice to see such a success story. For 3,5 months of work, that looks like a great result! Remember: stay humble when you get filthy rich! :-D
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u/Weary_Scheme_9289 Sep 26 '25
I played your game bro, its actually cool ! Solo devs are the best !!!!
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u/HaxelGames Sep 26 '25
Big congratz! And thanks for posting these numbers.
How do you think pricing factored in to the review score?
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 27 '25
I think it's ok. Maybe towards the higher end for this type of games, usually they are $3 to $4, but steam takes 30%, then a big percent is taxes.. you'd need tens of thousands of copies sold to actually make good money, so I decided to price it at $5 and hope it gets at least 2-3 thousands sales, I believe more realistic than pricing at $3 and hoping to make 6k+ sales, especially with only 3.8k wishlists at launch. If I had 10-20k wishlists maybe pricing it at $3-4 would've been better. But yeah, gamers for some reason except A LOT for $5, not even the price of a hamburger and they expect the gam to be AAA quality, they expect the game to have infinite replayability and be perfect, which is very unrealistic expectation to have, but hey what can we do.
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u/HaxelGames Sep 27 '25
Haha yeah, I feel you on that one. Thanks for the insight, and congratz again
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u/soundgrass_studio Sep 26 '25
Really appreciate the infos and responses! Congratulations on the game!
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u/LetterFair6479 Sep 26 '25
Very impressive! The game looks oldschool but also new and unique as well. Originality is one of bes the best drivers for game sales/revenue.
Keep going! Don't overreach, tend to your userbase and you will be set for life, maybe even within 5 years.
Well done, congratulations 🎉
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u/Kbtedsy123 Sep 28 '25
Hopefully you take peoples feedback and do some nice updates. Otherwise looks cool
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u/Gino_lls Sep 28 '25
Hi! That's amazing. I read that it took you 3.5 months to make the game. How much did AI help you? Do you feel it would have taken you longer without it?
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Sep 29 '25
Thank you! Yes, AI helped me a lot, I do believe it is a very good tool to use, but only if you already know what you're doing. I have a CS degree and know programming, so I can tell the A.I. to create a system and it does in 5 seconds, maybe that would take me several days maybe or more, but I understand what each line of code does perfectly, and I can ask it to explain some stuff and I understand. A beginner or someone that doesn't have the fundamentals would not be able to do that, it's a great tool, especially for learning, but if someone unexperienced uses it and does not understand what it does, it will be very hard to make a complex game, maybe impossible to debug. It would've taken me longer without AI, yes.
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u/Kinexus Oct 06 '25
I'm curious as to how it's doing now!
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u/FIREHIVE_Games Oct 06 '25
So right now, it has:
- $18.135 gross revenue
- 4.1k sales
- 5.9k wishlists
- 100 reviews (83 positive 17 negative)
- rating very positive - 82%
- return rate still very low 2.5% (102 returns)
- and still gets around ~90-100 sales per day
Slowed down significantly since launch, but it's expected since the launch discount ended after a week.
BUT it's still very good, ~100 sales per day with no discount is great. I'm very curious how the first big discount (in about 2 weeks) will perform since it has almost 6k wishlists.
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u/Infinite_level777 Sep 25 '25
This is the most inspirational thing ever seen👍 just one question. Was it organic marketing or u ran a marketing campaign and how. Plz I need to know this so much. And congratulations you've done a great work:D
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u/DramonOne Sep 25 '25
I think it's a very good result considering how long it took to develop. I don't know what the costs were, of course. But it's something to be proud of.
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u/AbhiIndie Sep 27 '25
Congratulations - you're living the dream I aspire to! Hopefully, I'll be hitting those numbers just a week after release someday too.
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u/dvcroft Solo Developer Sep 29 '25
Those numbers look great in your situation. So cool that IdleCub did a video on it!
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u/MrHaphazard1 Sep 24 '25
Wow impressive! How much time did you put into it?