Recently, the well-known developer Code Monkey (Endless Loop Studios) shared his approach to work and financial successes on social media.
According to him, he managed to earn over a million dollars from nine games on Steam:
I often get asked, "Did most of this revenue come from a small number of very successful projects, or is the secret to make many games and the sum just accumulates?" The answer is a bit of both. I've never had a "mega-hit," but the income gap between successful and unsuccessful games is quite large. The most successful, I think, were Game Corp DX (about $250k) and Blueprint Tycoon (about $200k). So these two games alone accounted for a significant portion of the total income.
Code Monkey's other projects brought in, for example, $10k or $100k — the income range is wide. He believes it's better to release many games to smooth out the income curve, and to make them small, gradually increasing the baseline income:
I'm a big proponent of making small games and gradually increasing your baseline income. If I wasn't primarily focused on teaching [other people] right now, that's exactly what I'd be doing — making and releasing lots of small games to have a relatively stable income month to month.
Code Monkey also noted that his first game, Survivor Squad, released on Steam in 2013, still generates money — enough for about "one or two lunches a month."
The trailer is available at the following link.