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Comment by vzhou842 | Hacker News Reader

original creator of generals.io here (late to the party)

really cool to see people still having fun with this game I made in college! I sold the game a few years back because I didn't have time to properly maintain it, and I'm glad the new owners have kept it running.

Linking to some past HN threads on this:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13145781 original generals.io post

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13562866 launch of the Bot API

View on HN

How much does a game/IP like that sell for, if I may ask?

+1 also curious

2-3x yearly net revenue, more if you're lucky.

Revenue is ultimately a function of DAU, either via ad RPMs or IAP / subscription conversion rate.

Also most sales agreements have a confidentiality covenant.

> 2-3x yearly net revenue, more if you're lucky.

And what is the yearly net revenue of a game like generals?

> Also most sales agreements have a confidentiality covenant

Yeah that's super annoying. I'm mainly just interested in the ballpark. $10k? $50k? $100k? $500k? >$1m?

Just curious, how would that ballpark number be helpful?

This thread has inspired me to do further research and explore monetizing/selling some of my side projects. I am curious how a ballpark sales value is useful...

Because it's interesting to know if my hypothetical video game similar to this is worth a few beers on a night, a fancy dinner, a year's salary, or enough to set me for life a la Microsoft's purchase of Minecraft. Depending on that information, someone could choose to build a game as a labor of love, build a game as a for-profit venture (haha), or decide to go do something else with their life.

Kind of rude to ask, if I had to guess less than $50k a year.

Kind of thing you put up and maintain because of the community you foster. Labor of love, not business.

To consider the act of asking rude depends totally on culture and milieu.

Minecraft sold for 2,5B when having sold 1B, now it sold 10B.

Largely due to Microsoft's strategic direction. I doubt Minecraft would have grown 10x under notch's leadership.

What big changes has Microsoft made? The whole Java/Bedrock split seems like a mess, and the updates have been enjoyable, but certainly nothing to write home about.

The only vaguely interesting thing I can point to is Minecraft Dungeons, which was fun for a month for my friend group, and then it wasn't.

Go walk around any toy section...

Merchandise

ballpark is $10k - $100k. Nothing too crazy but still nice to walk away from the project with something

hi victor, good to see you here! hope you're well :)

wow took me a bit to remember your username (time flies) but great to see you here too! :)

Did you ever consider to make the game persistent and MMO?

If so what made you resign that?

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