So... i was wondering around steamspy and checking out some games and found that broken age recently sold around 260 000 Copies ("owners").

I thought, wow what a great number, but then i started to think about it and what i discovered is shocking :-)!

And i want you to check if my "analysis" is correct and maybe tell me why Broken Age sold SO LITTLE!?

First, owners are 260 500 copies, but probably kickstarter backers should not count as people who bought broken age, since they didnt bought it, they kickstarterted it and all that money went probably into development so it is not an earning or profit for the creators (double fine).

The game broken age, had 87 142 backers on kickstarter. Even the smallest tier included the game, and there were no additional copies (AFAIK) offered in higher tiers (like pledge 500 USD and you get 10 copies of the game).

Now, the 100 USD and higher pledges containt AFAIK only a BOXED version of the game, physical disk, this means not steam version (?), all these copies have 12 700 owners. And assuing all other backers got the STEAM version of digital edition of broken age, the backers with steam edition are:

87 142 - 12 700= 74 442 copies.

This means broken age on steam sold only: 260 500- 74 442= 186 058 copies

But there was also one bundle i could find featuring broken age, this was humble bundle "The Humble Double Fine Bundle" and it sold 150 632 copies..., selling games on bundles gurantees the developer only a fraction of income in compare to regular purchase (at regular price), so we wont count even those, that makes 186 058- 150 632= 35 426 copies sold...

So Broken age, which is out for over a year manage, from the famous Tim schaffer managed to sell only 35 426 copies... Thats quite sad... Yes, these are only steam copies, but since the game didnt even came out in physical version (AFAIK) and even if it would it would make only few sales (physical games dont sell well today), and it doesnt include other digital vendors (like greenmangaming, gog or whatever), but these play second rolke and have usually only a fraction of sales on compare to steam... And some sales on steam of broken age could have been also with discount due to soem christmas sales etc...

And yes, if you count it all in all, and include also the humble bundle sales, that ammounts to 11 081 copies of broken age that would be sold at regular (23 eur/usd) price.

So broken age sold only 35 426 copies and if you include humble bundle it sold only 46 507 copies...

That looks like a really small number for Tim Schaffer, and funny in comparsion with the 260 500 via steamspy...

What do you think about this, is my counting process correct or did i omit something?

Broken Age is a really Niche game. Anybody that would be a fan I would have expected to already have Kickstarted it. The money raised from kickstarter like you say paid for the development and kept the team running throughout development. Any extra sales is just a bonus. Also it will continue to make money for them in the long tail.

First, owners are 260 500 copies, but probably kickstarter backers should not count as people who bought broken age, since they didnt bought it, they kickstarterted it and all that money went probably into development so it is not an earning or profit for the creators (double fine).

This makes no sense to me. Why wouldn't a backer count as someone who bought the game? Because Double Fine didn't profit off of them? Even if they didn't, how is that any different from a studio with investors that first have to sell an x amount of games before they start making a profit?

There are a lot of ifs and assumptions you're making, what is it that you're interested in? It doesn't seem to be the number of people Tim Schaffer can appeal to(the number you mentioned is lower than the amount of backers).

Yes point taken, you explained it right i didnt see it for some reason, kickstarter backers should count as buyers, the fact that the game is only probably a little profitable (only "few" copies sold post-kickstarter) is another issue.

Stil i thought Schaffer would sell more copies, maybe the delays and problems with budget did their own...

Unfortunately doublefine has a reputation for releasing shoddy games that aren't worth it now, expecially with how they handled SpaceBase DF-9. Personally, I'm never buying their products ever again after that.

You'd be wrong to remove kickstarted sales. They they are used as a means to pay for development, so are the sales you make after.

Tim is probably known, and I don't know whether he's rich and all but he could be working on a loan or else. Some things the game required may have yet to be paid, etc.

So no matter when the cash comes in, a lot of it vanishes into thin air regardless and the whole purpose of making sales is to FIRST take care of all dev costs.

200k sales at over $10 a copy is a lot of money, but a lot of it is already gone.

and 200k is actually fairly good, for something not AAA. I'd be extremely happy with that.

Of course, some games do a lot better, but they tend to be less niche. Space Engineers, for example, must be closing on 1.1 or 1.2 million copies sold by now and they are indie, but this is extremely rare.