Financial breakdown of a small company

jsmoke · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:16

I was playing facility 47 and noticed they had 13 staff plus another game company in the credits. The game is around £3.29 to buy on at least Android/iOS and a couple of other platforms I think. After quick look at their site I see they have developed several small time mobile games. Now I assume your talking around £30k salary per year on average. So that's 13x30= £390k on salaries alone per year plus all the software licenses, hardware, rent and other costs. Probably around £500k per year.

So for a small company I can't see how they sustain this unless they had a reasonable hit such as CoC's.

Is there somewhere I can see an actual financial breakdown of a small game companies income/out goings per year or can somebody in here explain the maths.

Surely they can't be making that much a year on the games they have on offer.

https://www.inertiasoftware.com/wordpress/

Woden · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:19

Do the games offer micro transactions?

jsmoke · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:25

Woden said:
Do the games offer micro transactions?

Well F 47 doesn't it's stand alone. I do understand that micro transactions can be a cash cow and maybe some of their other games offer this. That could well be it. Maybe there are many companies that have gone bust after their first release and this studio is one of the few that made it.

Moothead2 · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:28

In app purchases (the games on their site look as though they offer them), throwing out quick and easy games every year and not really striving for much other than that big hit like CoC without putting a whole lot of effort into making their games.

Dis86 · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:30

I think you're overestimating salaries. Massively.

Glaucus · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:32

jsmoke said:
Well F 47 doesn't it's stand alone..

are you sure, seeing as its advertised as in game purchases available at 69p per item.

you have the entire world, it cant be that hard to make several games a year and get something like 200k downloads between them. if you are happy with a modest income and of course can program etc.

glenimp617 · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:44

Dis86 said:
I think you're overestimating salaries. Massively.

How much do game developers earn on average? I have to admit, I also thought they'd be on around 30k

Weazle · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:45

I think a company like that would be venture capitalist funded .... a lot of starting tech companies usually are.

Concrete · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:46

Dis86 said:
I think you're overestimating salaries. Massively.

For a UK based studio he should be doubling that 30k per staff member once you take into account support costs.

Competent coders aint cheap!

Glaucus · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:49

Concrete said:
For a UK based studio he should be doubling that 30k per staff member once you take into account support costs.

Competent coders aint cheap!

its probably not a studio and it's not full games in the traditional sense.
these things can be groups of students/ex students often living together in a shared house.

jsmoke · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:49

Glaucus said:
are you sure, seeing as its advertised as in game purchases available at 69p per item.

you have the entire world, it cant be that hard to make several games a year and get something like 200k downloads between them. if you are happy with a modest income and of course can program etc.

Well your get around 1/3 of the way through then you get the option to carry on for £3.29. I didn't see any ingame purchase options.

I found them on companies house. They have registered 4 companies with two of them worth in excess of £1.2M. If somebody in here knows how to decipher these account breakdowns feel free.

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10173007/filing-history

Glaucus · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:51

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inertiasoftware.facility47&hl=en

bloodiedathame · 29 Mar 2018 at 14:52

Glaucus said:
its probably not a studio and it's not full games in the traditional sense.
these things can be groups of students/ex students often living together in a shared house.

Or outsourced to much cheaper workers abroad.

D.P. · 29 Mar 2018 at 15:10

Dis86 said:
I think you're overestimating salaries. Massively.

I'd say under estimating, massivley, uless this is some studio in Romania. Good luck getting skileld developers on less than 60K a year. We pay our stuff well north of 60k for example.

Glaucus · 29 Mar 2018 at 15:17

jsmoke said:
I found them on companies house. They have registered 4 companies with two of them worth in excess of £1.2M. If somebody in here knows how to decipher these account breakdowns feel free.

property 1.4million
tangable assets £3633

so they have no assets apart from probably one house. and like 2 computers.

Dis86 · 29 Mar 2018 at 15:23

D.P. said:
I'd say under estimating, massivley, uless this is some studio in Romania. Good luck getting skileld developers on less than 60K a year. We pay our stuff well north of 60k for example.

You're assuming a lot there. Who says they're skilled developers? A friend of mine employs 3 software developers who are on 15k each which rises to 18k after 6 months.
How do you know they have multiple developers at all? Their staff could include the cleaner, receptionist, tea boy.

jsmoke · 29 Mar 2018 at 15:24

Glaucus said:
property 1.4million
tangable assets £3633

so they have no assets apart from probably one house. and like 2 computers.

Is that between the four companies. Never quite got into account filings myself.
Must research.

TacticalFish · 29 Mar 2018 at 15:24

Just down the A10 from Cambridge!

From their about us page, it looks like they have an office. I would guess their assets are PC's.

Haggisman · 29 Mar 2018 at 17:00

Dis86 said:
You're assuming a lot there. Who says they're skilled developers? A friend of mine employs 3 software developers who are on 15k each which rises to 18k after 6 months.
How do you know they have multiple developers at all? Their staff could include the cleaner, receptionist, tea boy.

£15k? I assume they are either terrible, part time, or fresh out of uni and move on after a year when they realise they can get at least double that elsewhere! I was earning more than that fresh out of college on 1st line support 15 years ago...

Obviously it differs geographically, but in the West Midlands the going rate is ~£30-40k depending on experience (Obviously more if you're a senior dev leading a team, less if you're a trainee/junior with no experience at all)

LOAM · 29 Mar 2018 at 17:12

Some of their games have over 1,000,000 downloads on the playstore and all of them have in game purchases.