I was curious how Giant Bomb's coverage impacted the sales of Contradiction, but sales numbers of course are not public. So I went on Steam and counted the number of reviews since it's come out (not by hand, just by searching "July 15" etc. and seeing the number of results). Here's the graph:

Of course, this doesn't mean anything for sure (there could be many other factors involved), but it does suggest that Giant Bomb may have contributed to a significant uptick in reviews (and perhaps sales).

Also, regarding the overall sales of the game: Steam Spy estimates sales at 2 to 5 thousand copies. Since there are 158 reviews, this seems fairly reasonable if around 1 in every 22 purchases resulted in a review (that's on the same order as Dota 2 and Skyrim, which have reviews for 1/65 and 1/44 of purchases respectively). It's also not inconsistent with Giant Bomb having generated a significant proportion of those sales, at 30k views on the Contradiction QL on YouTube (and presumably more on the main site).

Anyway, at $10 a copy (minus Steam's cut), it seems like it would be (very roughly) from 14-35k USD. Since the Kickstarter requested ~4.7k USD and finished with 6k, one might hope that (if the developer and cast so choose) they will be in a good financial position to make a sequel.

Of course, this kind of speculation can be quite dangerous; I have no idea if the developer, I don't know, incurred debts in the making of the game and now the profits aren't enough even to break even. This is all just a guess.

Well, you have to realize that there are probably 156 less (=P) than whatever that amount listed there, as the kickstarters got free product codes.

Also, you have to add the iOS sales.

Graphs! That's a pretty cool fact. I really hope they continue to make sales so that maybe one day a sequel can be made. That game is an absolute gem!

Fascinating. I've always felt like it's in the best interest for developers to talk about how well their game is selling. For small developers anyhow. Especially selling a game that cost $10. Audiences, esepcially gaming audiences, are VERY receptive to interaction wtih creators.

Did you ever read that budget/profit breakdown the Shovel Knight devs did? It was really interesting.

Anyway, I don't know how much money the devs got outside of Kickstarter (government subsidies, investors, etc.), but it seems like they had quite a modest budget. I'm guessing much of the budget went towards paying cast and crew and for equipment? I'm still so impressed by what they accomplished with the final product.

The one thing I'd caution you against is estimating the game's revenue by just multiplying the SteamSpy reported number of owners by the current Steam price. That doesn't take into account keys given away to crowdfunding backers, press, Youtubers/streamers, etc. It also doesn't account for keys possibly sold at a different price during a sale or on another website. I don't think Contradiction has been in any bundles yet, but that can really throw a wrench in trying to estimate revenue as well.

The reason you don't see much of that is because most storefronts place a lot of restrictions on what sales information you can actually release. The best you can really do in most cases is discuss it in approximate (but not exact) number of copies sold.

I recently watched a podcast with Tim Follin yesterday where he mentioned he put around two-thousand of his own pounds into it. That gained with like the four-thousand from the kickstarted would give it a budget of around five thousand pounds? So around $8000 USD. The finished product is really impressive given that budget, and I think a sequel funded by kickstarter and the sales of the first game could have a budget that would blow this ones out of the water.

That makes a ton of sense. The first kickstarter was supposed to be 10,000 pounds (or dollars, not sure). After that failed to get anywhere close, he re-did it at 4K pounds, which it thankfully met. Makes sense that he had to add some money out of pocket to match his original more realistic estimate.

Dont forget none of this data includes the iPad version of the game.

I am one of those people who bought the game after GB showed it. I wish all the success to the creators and people involved. It's a fun silly thing, and I'm glad that they got their money back and then some.

You can use steamcharts.com to see how many users are online at any given time for any game on steam.

Oh wow. I would never have guessed Contradiction was one of those semi-unsavoury relaunched Kickstarters. I'm glad the final product turned out as good as it has.

My question would be, will any of these budget estimates be accurate without accounting for living expenses and such? Or is that included... I'm really ignorant on a dev's costs, I guess!

going by your graph there's a couple days difference between inital coverage and that huge spike in reviews, so if that equates to sales it seems reasonable to link that to GB's influence. this whole thing still feels kinda weird to me, though.

Thanks for putting the data together, pretty interesting. Also, I would guess that the GB coverage will certainly with the sequel's kickstarter, if there is one.