The Financials of Custom Content
Entry posted by Josh ·
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The Leadwerks Merc character, who I think will go down in history over the next few years second only to the infamous "Crawler", is an experiment. First of all, I wanted a completely custom-made character to developer AI with. This ensured that I was able to get the model made exactly to my specs so that we would have a template for other characters to follow. Fortunately, the script I wrote can easily be used with other models like Arteria's Strike Troop.
The quality of this model is really high and I am really happy to be able to provide high-end content like this for use with Leadwerks. The cost of production was $2965, plus $125 for the weapon model, for a total of $3090. Additional characters can be made at a slightly lower cost, if I choose to go forward with production. At $9.99, we need to sell 309 copies to break even.
Leadwerks model packs sell quite well as DLCs, but so far Workshop Store sales have been slower. It seems that getting people to use the new store is a task itself, because people are unfamiliar with the process.
In the first two weeks, the Merc character has sold 13 copies for a total of $129 in sales (times 70% after the Steam tax). Assuming a flat rate of sales, this means that the character will take one year and four months before sales have covered costs.
This is not an acceptable rate of recovering costs. I am not going forward with additional custom characters based on these results. Not sure how this will go forward, but I am halting all production for now.
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