P&L Template for indies
TLDR Summary
Games are a business, and you need insight into your game's financial success. That's where our P&L tool comes in. It breaks down your game's financial viability based on your input data, helping you understand costs and potential earnings. Use it to gauge your game's performance or learn from other games. It's free because we aim to help indie developers understand game economics and make informed decisions for better financial outcomes.
Games are a business
Hello and welcome developer. You might be a newly graduated individual trying to make your first game or a veteran dev leaving a big publisher to try and make it on your own. Regardless of your situation, making games is business, and at the end of the day we all have to eat.
So, would it not be wonderful to at least have an educated guess about how well your game would fare in the real world? How will your future look like and what do you need to do to impact it differently?
Well we have the tool for you!
Profit & Loss
The P&L is a breakdown of your games financial viability. It will provide a high level look of your games overall financial performance based on input data that you provide. Information such as retail price of your game, developer salaries, first party royalties etc. are all taken into consideration to provide you a better understanding of what it takes to become financially successful with your game.
To be as accurate as possible, we recommend that you do some market research and look at comparable games to the one you are making. By doing so, you can use real world data and input that into the sheet to give you a more accurate P&L that will tell the story of your games financial future.
Feel free to use this tool to understand how your game will fare in the real world. Or why not get a better understanding of how other games are performing? Most publishers and investors have smart people doing the math for you, but this P&L template can be a good tool to show that you are well prepared and know your business.
Why is this P&L Template Tool free?
I have been working with indie developers for a while. What I learned is that many of them lack the understanding of video game economics. Where does money come from and where does it go? So for example, something as simple as royalties from unreal engine and how to deduct them from your game sales can be confusing and a chore.
That is why I decided to solve this problem once and for all. Provide a comprehensive tool that can aid indie developers in quickly understanding what impact different decisions can make on their bottom line.
Credits, feedback and paying it forward
Please share this tool with other game developers. This would help both us and everyone else make better business decisions.
If this tool has helped your game in any shape or form, then we would really appreciate a mention in your games credit list (not mandatory, but greatly appreciated).
Finally, if you have any feedback on this sheet. Feel free to reach out through our website contact form.
Wish you the best of luck!
