A recreation referred to as Bongo Cat has been persistently showing on the high of Steam’s concurrent players chart in the previous few months, sitting alongside long-time heavy-hitters like Counter-Strike 2 and PUBG within the high 5. But regardless of commonly attracting over 150,000 concurrents, the sport does not really make any cash, its developer has revealed in a latest interview.
Marcel Zurawka is the CEO and co-founder of Irox Video games, the studio behind Bongo Cat. In a latest interview with Eurogamer, Zurawka pulled again the curtain on the sport’s viral success, revealing that the excessive participant numbers have not translated to revenue for the studio.
“Some folks mentioned, ‘Oh you are now wealthy.’ That is bullshit. I did not make it for the cash in any respect,” Zurawka mentioned. “So the primary month of March, we made $2000 web, after Steam cuts and the whole lot.” He shares all of Bongo Cat’s month-to-month income–$4050 for April, the height of the sport’s virality, $3800 in Could, and all the way down to $2800 for June thus far.
“It is not even paying a developer for us,” he provides. “In case you simply take a look at the numbers, it is really dropping us cash in the long run.”
Bongo Cat is a free idle recreation that is actually extra of a desktop app than an precise recreation. It places somewhat cat on high of your job bar, who faucets his paws on a counter for each key press and mouse click on. Bongo Cat can uncover totally different hats because the counter goes up, and this stuff could be traded on Group Marketplaces for actual money–which has additionally resulted in elevated bot exercise within the recreation.
Zurawka says that the cash constructed from market transactions is mostly lower than half of Bongo Cat’s whole revenue, with the majority of its gross sales coming from paid cat skins accessible within the recreation as microtransactions.
Creating wealth was by no means the objective of Bongo Cat, nevertheless. “I need to have it as a straightforward companion instrument for everyone and don’t need anybody to pay something,” Zurawka explains. “For me, it ought to at all times be as accessible as attainable. I do not need to pay-wall something.”
The sport’s success has had a distinct type of constructive affect on the studio, nevertheless, performing as a advertising instrument that is pushed views and wishlists for the studio’s subsequent title in growth, Oku.