Humble Bundle Insta-Post-Mortem

Crossposted from the Pocketwatch blog 

Monaco just finished up its two week run in Humble Indie Bundle 11.  So, how’d we do?

Total payments: $2,323,681

Number of purchases: 493,816

We sold a ton of units, but with a fairly low average price ($4.71). One can probably assign partial blame to the Beat the Average games, Monaco and Antichamber.  The bundle may have ended up with a higher average price (and thus a much higher gross) had Monaco been swapped with Guacamelee or Dust: An Elysian Tale.  Even so, we performed quite well, and a lot of people are playing our games now!

How much did Monaco make?

Monaco was a Beat the Average game, which means that not all HIB bundle sales resulted in a Monaco sale.  Of the 493,000 bundles sold, 370,034 of them included Monaco.  Of those, 270,677 have activated their Steam keys.  Interestingly, this means three quarters of the Humble customers beat the average.  (Remember that the average starts low and climbs as people beat the average)

This means that Monaco has now sold over 750,000 copies!

Distribution of revenue typically ends up being the default distribution of 65% developers, 20% charity, 15% humble tip.

With 6 developers, plus the mid-week additions of Fez, Starseed Pilgrim, and BeatBuddy, that’s around 8% per developer.

Monaco grossed approximately $215,000 over the course of the Humble Bundle.  Of course we’ll know more when we get the actual sales report.  In any case, that’s a nice hefty sum!

Steam Sales and Cannibalization

This chart shows gross revenue of sale on Steam (not Humble Bundle) over the last 31 days.  The Humble Bundle started on the 18th.  Despite the huge number of units that we sold in the Humble Bundle, it doesn’t appear that our presence in the HIB affected our day-to-day Steam revenue.

Why is this?  My guess is that customers tend to be loyal to sales channels.  Customers that buy from Humble Bundle tend to only buy indie games from there, and customers that buy full priced games on Steam probably don’t know about — or don’t care about — Humble Bundle.

What do you think?  Any theories as to why Steam sales don’t appear to be affected by an active Pay What You Want bundle?

-Andy Schatz  @andyschatz