Every time we tell another developer that our games are paid up front with no ads and no in-app purchases, we get the same look. Polite, slightly worried. So here are the numbers from Lumen Drift's first year, as plainly as we can put them.
The headline figures
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid downloads | 118,400 |
| Price | €3.99 (regional pricing applied) |
| Gross revenue | €392,000 |
| After store fees & VAT | €271,000 |
| Refund rate | 1.6% |
| Average rating | 4.8 (iOS) · 4.7 (Android) |
About 61% of that revenue arrived in the first ten weeks, most of it during the fortnight Apple featured us. After that, the curve flattened into a steady €9,000–€12,000 a month, with small spikes from sales and a mention on a popular podcast.
Where the money went
Two salaries, modest by Lisbon tech standards. Rent on the studio. A composer for the soundtrack (€8,500), localisation into nine languages (€6,200), testing devices, accounting, and a small amount of paid social we probably shouldn't have bothered with. What remains funds roughly fourteen months of runway for the next game.
We're not rich. We are, for the first time, not worried. For a two-person studio, that's the whole game.
What we'd do differently
- Launch the Android version on day one. We shipped it seven weeks late and missed most of the press window. Android ended up at 27% of revenue anyway.
- Price higher in some regions. Players in Japan and Switzerland told us €3.99 felt "suspiciously cheap". We've since adjusted.
- Offer a free demo sooner. Adding a free first constellation in month eight increased conversion from store page views by 38%.
Is premium right for everyone?
No. Premium works for us because our games are small, our team is smaller, and our players are mostly adults who are happy to pay once for something that respects them. A studio of twenty building a live-service game has different maths.
But if you're a tiny team wondering whether you have to fill your game with ads to survive, the answer — at least for us, this year — was no.