Octodad: Dadliest Catch has grossed $4.9m in a year
Not bad for a team of nine.
Octodad: Dadliest Catch has grossed $4.9m dollars as of 30th January, its one year anniversary.
Developer Young Horses broke down the numbers for us on Twitter in an informative infographic (as seen below).
First off, the developer is made up of nine members and the game took just over 31 months to develop. If everyone were paid equally (which is unlikely given that some worked on the game longer than others) that's roughly $211K a year per person.
Even crazier, Young Horses figured its staff only worked about 24 hour weeks. As such, the total development time came to about 28,208 hours. That's $174 per hour!
Of course, it's not that simple. One needs to factor in the costs of producing Kickstarter rewards, setting up shop at trade shows and conventions, purchasing software, marketing, and paying licensing fees.
While Octodad: Dadliest Catch ended up being a colossal success, it could have been a failure. And 31 months is a long time to work with no idea how much money you'll make... or lose if you're unlucky.
As such, Young Horses Kickstarted the game to help offset the aforementioned development costs as well as help out with living expenses during this long ordeal. The studio only made $24,320 off Kickstarter, which isn't much for nine people over 2.5 years, so it's not like the developer was just coasting off crowdfunding.
Octodad: Dadliest Catch sold a total of 459,735 copies in a year. That means people spent an average of $10.67 per copy. To put that in perspective, it usually retails for $14.99.
The game was most successful on PC, which made up 61.6 per cent of sales and 55 per cent of revenue (as promotions affected its PC pricing). Meanwhile, PS4 made up only 32.6 per cent of sales but 39.2 per cent of revenue. And finally, Mac was around five per cent for both and Linux didn't even muster one per cent for either sales or revenue.
While Octodad was a fruitful venture for Young Horses, only 37 per cent of players actually made it to the end of the game. Amusingly, the developer boasted about the fact that it won no significant awards and holds a Metacritic score of 69 on both PC and PS4.
