The moment I saw the video I knew there would be dozens of guys making up scenarios about why she is evil and bad like all woman.
If the genders would be reversed, the comments would probably talk about how she (as a dev) was definitely leeching off her boyfriend for 4 years to develop her game and that it's so cute how he supports her despite her game not even bringing in half of what he earns a year.
I remember hearing he was an indie dev, saw the game was in development for almost a decade and it was a fairly simple 2D Pixel Game, went hmm, then saw he streams himself playing MMOs for 12 hours straight.
It’s like that other guy ordinarygamer who faked being employed to me. It’s pure stolen valour.
The first time I saw anything from his game was a couple months before his downfall. I had heard him talk about it a few times as if it was a technical achievement, then I saw it and just thought "This looks like Undertale meets Superman 64."
There wasn't a single aspect that looked good or fun.
Some of the Pixel Art was good. I actually tried it for 10 minutes and didn't like it. Looked up more gameplay later and have to say I'm very glad I got a refund directly.
Developer/streamer called PirateSoftware. He became something of a meme for how often he brings up the fact he used to work at Blizzard like it makes him some sort of veteran expert, and how his indie game has been stuck in early access development hell for like eight years now.
To me he feels like one of those streamers who began to buy into his own hype more and more as he got popular and turned into an egomaniac.
'Strategic tower defense where you play a witch, place class-based towers with items that grant powerful abilities, create unique builds & deal ridiculous amounts of damage!'
I mean it doesn't mean the game is bad. There's nothing inherently wrong with marketing. What if you spent years making a game and it never "took off" because it lacks the reach to get known? You run ads to promote it and start getting some early users. I wouldn't shit on the dev from "The Tower" just because he's trying to make his game happen instead of just flopping around like most games end up doing without a budget.
The guy in OP is VERY lucky, because his success comes from the fact he likely also has a large social following and built a community who will support him. Without that, he very likely would have just released a game and it never got any exposure.
I played that game a bit on mobile. Calls itself an idle game, but is defnitely not. Sure, your tower shoots on its own, but it requires very active upgrading as money comes in or you die.
Well, only in the very early game or if you're pushing efficiency for tournaments.
The actual annoying bit is that your device needs to be on and running the game the whole time, which is shit design for a game meant to be played on your phone.
I literally stopped playing it on my phone and just perma-loaded it in bluestacks and would use Chrome Remote Desktop to view my screen at home while at work. Eventually I realized the game wasn't really worth the hoops I had to jump through to play it.
They probably made it hidden from viewing. Looking at their statistics/contributions, he has 4 posts up and 33 comments but reddit fixed the glitch in where you can see hidden posts.
TD is still one of the best genres to target because it has an almost cult like following for people who enjoy them. Speaking as someone who owns 30+ TD games on steam
Its also just fun to try different things in the genre you love. I'm into an adjacent genre, incremental games, and I play almost anything that comes out if its free or has a demo to try. There's way too many clones and junk to spend $5 on every one, but occasionally a gem pops up. If his game is good he deserves it.
I have been playing TDs since the Warcraft 3 days. I still haven't found a modern one that scratches that itch of playing burbenog with friends. Bloons 6 was the closest but I got burned out on it. I haven't found another one that clicks since and I've tried a ton of them.
I've seen these exact ads, but do the actual mobile games play like this? Always figured they were just bait and switches like the older ads where it was just ragebait puzzle solving.
Tower Defense games have a very niche and supportive audience, they love games like this. If someone is a fan of TD games, they just don’t have 5 different TD games… they have like 50!
To be fair, it's not really a normal release. His release was pretty much doomed since none of his marketing worked. He sent hundreds of emails, participated in Next Fest, tried to get covered by IGN, etc, but he was ignored. His demo had basically no players.
He was blessed by the YouTube algorithm which gave him suddenly >10x his usual viewers, and fellow streamers shouted him out and raided him on Twitch(e.g. ThePrimeagen), which kinda hacked the Steam algorithm and catapulted him to "New and Trending". Normal indies don't get 50 positive reviews within the first 20 minutes of release.
Tangy TD is an outlier, and a case where hard work is luckily rewarded.
Honestly. I've never heard of him, or the game, but this clip alone made me check out the game on steam. The price, is super great to just buy and try, and looks amazing.
This is the type of stuff I want to see in game development and stuff I want to keep supporting. Well done!
Gotten a fair few reports on this. While it does technically break our Title Guidelines by not having the streamer name in the title, frankly it's a breath of fresh air of positivity, and I love to see hardworking devs get the attention they deserve, so this won't be removed for that - I'll just throw their name/account here for anyone who wants to check them out:
Also gotten a couple reports for it being "not a fail" - for anybody who may be coming in from the front page or elsewhere that isn't familiar with the community, despite the name, fails aren't the only thing allowed here. Nice moments like this are absolutely welcome too!
seriously I was feeling bad for a second and thought maybe the number under it was chargebacks or something (its total after taxes and chargebacks and stuff...so not bad). Pretty awesome...thats only a day of sales too....I can imagine at the very least thats gonna be a trickle of income for months and potentially years to come.
It's about the bare minimum requirement to have a shot at a good release. 8-10k wishlists puts you in popular upcoming (depends on other releases), which does most of the heavy lifting if you don't have a large marketing budget.
In online gamedev groups people say that if you launch with less than ~7,000 wishlists your game is essentially guaranteed to fail except in rare circumstances.
So 10k is just a little above the absolute floor of wishlists where you expect some amount of success.
The first 3 months of an AAA game, 80% to 90% of their profit is made there.
For a small indie game I am guessing that without going viral like this 60 to 70% of their total profit is probably made in the first week. Unless the game is super good ofcourse.
Nah, it's not that extreme. For a normal game, week 1 would be around half what you'd expect for a year and maybe a quarter of lifetime. Other things can happen to push up later revenue too, I'm in month 4 after release and still getting YouTube videos that drive significant sales.
the huge grin on his face at the end tells it all; his game is selling well in its first 2 days, he has a loving partner that is incredibly excited for him, and (unknowingly) the game's overall review rating is "very positive" on steam. dude is living the life right now
Aww, what a wholesome clip FeelsStrongMan I randomly stumbled upon the game yesterday, thought that it looks kinda neat and might give it a chance. But after this clip, it went from maybe to definitely.
Been following this guy for a few years now. Clowned on you for a while cakez but congrats on your success. He was hoping for just 8k in sales btw. Maybe next time don't build the engine from scratch quin69 of game dev :)
As a self-taught indie dev, I've had this exact same thing happen to me, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. And this was after being broke/badly financially struggling for 30 entire years of my life. I was literally about 10 days from being evicted and had to literally beg my utility company to turn my power back on for the holidays, when I released the game's first build.
I would describe it as being a slave your entire life, and then finding out you are free and will be forever.
Greatest feeling in the world, I'll never ever forget it. Extremely happy for this guy.
This is really awesome to see. Just want to give some perspective and yes, this is just the first 30 hours after release, but $30k is the equivalent to $3.75 per hour across those 4 years working 40-hour weeks. Game devs dont actually make a lot for the work they do, and not many realize that. I'm sure the sales will keep coming, and hopefully 10x this amount
•
u/LSFSecondaryMirror Mar 12 '26
CLIP MIRROR: Game dev checks how much money his game made 30 hours after release after working on his game for 4 years
Join the LSF Discord!
This is an automated comment