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Steam Sales Stats From My Game – Yerba Mate Tycoon + Android/IOS Release Stats

I’m back with new data from my Steam niche game “Yerba Mate Tycoon“, this post is a continuation of the first-month early access stats post. YMT was released on Steam 15.06.2021 as an early access title, and it had left early access on 3.09.2021 This post contains Steam data from 15.06.2021 to 24.10.2021, the marketing budget for the game was $0. If an image in this post is too small, you can click on it, to open it in full size. If you are interested in Android/IOS statistics, just scroll down.

PS: this post is also available as a video, if you just wish to read this post, just continue reading, and ignore the video :-}

Steam Sales/Revenue

I had sold 907 game copies on Steam, which gives me $1723. The average game price was ~$1.9. The Cash is after Vat/refunds/Steam 30% cut, from it, I still need to pay various taxes in my country/other things. As a curiosity, I had sold more game copies during early access, than after it. But it’s probably because of the game marketing before/during early access. I think that the game sales number won’t raise anymore. I would be happier with 1024 sold copies (it’s a more round number) :-}

At the launch, the game was sold for ~$3.5 (10% discount), then the price went back to $4, 15.07.2021 I had raised the game price from $4 to $5. Let’s look at best day sales:

• 120 units –> $236 (early access enter). Countries (% sales): 43% Argentina, 21% Poland, 6% USA
• 44 units –> $166 (early access exit +1 day). Countries (% sales): 37% Poland, 11% Argentina, 11% Germany
  

On the best day, I had sold almost 3x more game copies on early access enter than exit, but the earnings don’t represent that huge difference, it’s not only because of different game prices ($3.5 vs $4.5), but it’s mostly about different sales countries. On early access exit, I got fewer sales from Argentina, but more from Poland/Germany.

Below we got the sales chart, let me notice some important moments on it:

• 15 June –> Early access release with 10% discount (full price was $4).
• 16 August –> Sale 20% (full price was $5)
  
• 3 September –> Early access exit, 10% discount.
• 10 October –> Mobile version release (Android/IOS).

 ^ 15.06.2021 to 24.10.2021 sales stats, revenue before Vat, Steam cut, taxes. Daily Steam units and revenue.

During the early access (after a few days), I had released my game on Linux (21.06) + macOS (24.06), now let’s look at total system sales:

• Linux –> ~2.8% sales
• macOS –> 7.8% sales and ~4x more revenue than Linux
• Windows –> 89.4% sales

Windows in terms of sales/revenue is the best platform. Linux version was released before the macOS version, but still, it performed a lot worse than the macOS version, macOS version generated ~4x more revenue than the Linux version. It’s probably because of the different (richer) countries of buyers. But to be honest, I love both platforms, I won’t drop Linux support. Still, my development PC is very slow,

I’m just one person, so updating the game on various platforms/testing takes a bit of time, of course in terms of cash it was not worth porting the game. But the ports for other platforms had given me ~10.6% extra sales, I love it. And I’m using Unity, my games are not complex, so porting doesn’t take that much time, most of the time is taken by updates. For my new game, I will try to have Linux/macOS support on Steam from day one because if players want to play my game on Linux/macOS they just should have that option.

Now let’s look at regions of sales:

26% Of units come from Latin America (7% revenue)

23% Of units come from Eastern Europe (27% revenue)

21% Of units come from Western Europe (31% revenue)

16% Of units come from North America (26% revenue)

7% Of units come from the Middle East (3% revenue)

^ Those regions generated 93% of sales and 94% of revenue

^ % of sold units + revenue in regions

Now let’s look at countries of sales:

20% Of units come from Poland (25% revenue)

20% Of units come from Argentina (4% revenue)

14% Of units come from the USA (23% revenue)

11% Of units come from Germany (17% revenue)

6% Of units come from Turkey (2% revenue)

^ Those five countries generated 71% of sales and 71% of revenue

^ % of sold units + revenue in countries

Why are there huge sales in Poland and Argentina? I’m from Poland, so it explains everything + yerba mate is popular in Poland. Same situation with popularity in Argentina.

Steam Wishlist

Players who had added my game to the wishlist will get notifications about sales/game release/game leaving early access. The graph shows data after early access first release (it does not include data before early access). We can notice a spike at game release and at 20% sale + early access leaving. I got more wishlist conversion (sales) during the 20% sale than during the early access exit. But at the early access exit, we can notice a spike in the wishlist additions.

Right now, Yerba Mate Tycoon has 2182 current outstanding wishes, It has 379 wishlist purchases & activations.

Let’s look at some conversion statistics, here we can notice again, that leaving early access had lower conversion than 20% discount. I think that conversion rates are not bad, there will still be autumn/winter sales and some more sales, so I will observe it. Maybe I will write a new post after the new year with discounts effect on sales?

Below, we can see a Steam image that summarizes 132 days in early access + time after it. In that time wishlist has raised by 1466.

As a bonus, on itch.io (Steam alternative), after my last blog post, I had sold a few copies there. The total amount of sold copies of my game on  itch.io is 5, which earned me $20.39 marked as “for payout”, but I had to pay a $3 fee for tax verification + 10% withholding tax, so I got on my PayPal around ~$16? Something like that, from this I still need to pay taxes in my country. And as a curiosity, when the game was on sale ($5 –> $4) one player gave me a $1 tip, thank you :}

Releasing 100% free game on Android/IOS

I always wanted to port Yerba Mate Tycoon to the Android/IOS platform as a paid game, the game would cost $1-$2. But because of the complex tax situation, it would take me an extra few months of paperwork, and I hate paperwork, I mean programming is good for the brain when paperwork is terrible for mental health/brain. So, I decided to release my game as a free one, but I wanted to avoid spamming users with ads, so I decided that YMT will be 100% free on the mobile platform, no ads, no IAP, just a 100% free game.

I’m so sorry that I don’t have stats from paid games on Android/IOS, some people were asking for them, but the situation was unique. The mobile version was released on 04.10.2021 on Android/IOS. The data is from 26.10.2021

Android game statistics (Google Play)

On Android (Google Play) Yerba Mate Tycoon got a total of 3307 downloads, the highest number of downloads in one day is 1109 :O, that’s huge for me, right now, the typical downloads are 20-25 per day, but they will fall soon. As a curiosity on the Amazon App Store, the game has been downloaded 3 times…

If we look at Android versions, version 11 is the most popular (almost 50%), then version 10 (~31.5%), and version 9 (~11%). The minimal Android version for the game is 5.0, but we can observe that most of the downloads come from higher Android versions than 5.

If we look at countries, most of the downloads come from Poland (38.2%) and the USA (11.3%). Compared to the PC version, we can notice a rise in Russia and a drop in Argentina players. Percent of players on Android from Germany is lower than on PC.

IOS game statistics (App Store)

Now let’s look into IOS downloads, YMT got 3400 downloads on App Store (IOS), so it’s even better than on Android (3307) :O, and we need to notice that, IOS got lower market share on mobile than Android. On the best day, the game got 542 downloads in App Store. The spike of downloads was not on the first day of release, it was a few days ago, maybe it was because of my promotion actions/hitting some chart, maybe?

Around 85% of downloads come from iPhone and 15% from the iPad. If we look at the IOS versions, most downloads come from IOS 15, IOS 14.7, and IOS 14.8. As a curiosity, 7 downloads come from IOS 12.4, but IOS 12 + IOS 13 is only like ~1.3% of downloads.

If we look at countries, most downloads come from the USA/Poland/Canada/UK/Mexico. Comparing this to Android or PC, the USA achieved first place too. Mexico is in the top 10 too.

Revenue from mobile version (Android/IOS) + impact on the PC version

The mobile version is 100% free on Android/IOS (no ads or IAP), so there is no revenue, there is a donation option, and from the mobile version, I had gathered like ~$4 donations from 3400 IOS and 3300 Android downloads. Still thanks a lot for the donations, oh, and we need to notice that some people had bought my game on Steam, of course, it was not a big spike, but some people did it, hard to calculate the exact amount, but on the graph at the start of the post, we can notice there was no spike in sales.

There was some extra boost in overall marketing, but not a big one, some social media raised by a few extra followers, etc. So, In terms of cash/marketing, it was not worth it. But I was excepting it because if players will play my game on mobile, why they should buy the PC version? The game is not long enough for it, it’s not an open-world RPG or something like that, but a simple tycoon. Still thanks a lot for playing the game, each upvote on various websites and a lot more, have fun :-}

Plans?

Well, the last update for YMT was released on 22.10.2021, right now, I don’t have more plans for updates, in terms of cash the game was a complete failure, no profit, but it was a nice experience, I don’t regret creating YMT, today I would like the same, but I would improve many things. That’s why… I’m working on a new game :-} Right now there is no Steam Store page or anything more, the code-named is “Die And Repeat”. It will be simply a “rouge-lite” inspired game, turn-based, nothing special. I want to try/learn something new, the game will take me a year or two, or maybe I will never finish it :} You can follow me on social media or join the e-mail newsletter, so you won’t miss my new game release and statistics from it.

^ Screenshot from “Die And Repeat”

In plans, I also got a post about discounts (autumn, winter, lunar year) effect on game sales + maybe some other posts, Or maybe an update about the mobile version? If you got any questions, feel free to ask them, thanks for reading or just scrolling down.