Well, if you want to pay your bills, just get a normal job. You might even make more money doing traditional IT / business app development rather than game programming. Designing games is an art form, and like making music or drawing, lots of people are trying and most don't make any money. The ones that do hit it big are millionaires, but it's a small chance, unless you already have a ton of experience. Making a hit game on your first game is almost impossible. So the smartest thing to do is not quit your day job, and just work on games as a hobby, until you think you have enough skill to do it professionally.
Return on investment and ultimately selling your game
I think it's also worth pointing out that unless you're a lunatic like me another smart thing to do would be to would be to really downsize your projects, you are not going to make the next Halo or big open world game on your first try. Even I thought I was being sensible when I focused on just making a very basic platformer but that was quite a struggle for me as a beginner. Now I'm settled into the Godot engine I could probably whip a fairly decent one up within a couple of months but the size of your project should never be underestimated.
Now I disagree that 2D is generally 'easier' than 3D, it depends entirely on what you're making and what your goals are but I'd say what ever you're probably thinking of you should downsize to about 1/5th of that. You also need to take into account things like art, sound and music as well. For the record, none of this is meant to discourage anyone from being a game dev or making games, it's just when it comes to projects and actually putting them out there and making money you have to be very grounded in reality.
Again, thanks as these are the real conversations that one needs to have to live in the real world of what to expect. For some context, I am a seasoned software developer (Microsoft Stack mostly so Godot C# is what I have adopted) and so far the learnings have been fairly straight forward. Admittedly, it is a whole different ball game than commercial software and yes, more of an art form.
The reality here is that I am weighing options in my head of just going ahead and building yet another business app with the hopes of making some passive income, or try something 'fun' and do the same with a game. Nothing too fancy, 2D top down RPG) but, as Lethn has alluded to, would probably explode in workload as I have seen how much work it is and have barely completed 2 levels, without sound et al. I was hoping to build a 2d top down RPG that is inspired by old-school games like Buck Rogers and Countdown to Doomstay. Was a lot of fun back in the day...but I might be out of touch with the current-day gamer. (I probably am)
It would be a bit of a hobby, but I would prefer that it makes money. I have absolutely no intention of becoming a 'game developer' or leaving my day job as I am very successful. I just don't want to throw away the game after 2 years just because the style of game I plan on, would just not be what any mobile platform player or any other would pay $$ for...or that I chose the wrong platform or monetization scheme. If the game doesn't account for at least 25k after 2-3 years of effort of work, I probably would not bother. But trying to do any form or projections would probably be a lot more easy if I can find similar projects and measure their success/effort. Something I would still need to do, but just wanted to hear from the pros here
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In terms of what game you want to make and 'throwing it away after 2 years' I completely understand, if you go into games development it is a very good idea to focus entirely on genres you really, really enjoy playing otherwise you'll burn out on a long term project fast. I have a fairly wide range of games I enjoy but it surprised me finding out I wasn't into platformers as I thought I was. As a result with my game dev I'm focusing on shooters, RTS' and RPGs, gotta have that pew pew otherwise I'm not satisfied 
I have heard Epic has a better percentage rate for developers, has anyone posted there?
And what about GOG? I use them WAY more than Steam these days.
SnapCracklins And what about GOG?
GOG on this list is probably the most decent… if we can talk about decency here at all…
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GOG have been caught doing censorship and being dodgy about handling money so I'm definitely advocating for itch really, I am also not a great fan of CD Projekt Red these days.
Lethn GOG have been caught doing censorship and being dodgy about handling money
And they aren't exclusively DRM free anymore either. So basically no selling points left.
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GoG is also heavily curated, and you basically have to have a name for yourself before they allow your game. Same with Epic, though Epic is even more strict. Yes, if your first game is really good, or has press, let's say from a Kickstarter or you have a publisher, then you can get on those platforms. But if you aren't established, you have very little chance of getting your game accepted. Steam allows everyone, but requires a review process, while Itch allows everything, similar to YouTube, you just upload whatever you want.
Lethn GOG have been caught doing censorship and being dodgy about handling money so I'm definitely advocating for itch really
By " this list" I meant Epic and Steam. I should have been clearer. itch.io is out of the competition.
Not bad at distributing games on Patreon.
Unfortunately, my thinking is purely theoretical — I can't really test them in reality at the moment. I cannot withdraw money to my country via the payment services they work with.
I've been looking into crypto payments (please don't discuss your opinion on NFTs, or whatever, I am talking about in respect to a game development business). However, not many people actually use crypto aside from investors. I think the businesses that have offered it as an option only get around 10% from crypto, and 90% from credit card and PayPal. So it would be very difficult to make enough money without standard forms of payment.
cybereality I've been looking into crypto payments
I don't know about other countries, but in ours, you have to pay a very high percentage to cash in crypto. It is extremely unprofitable to get involved with it.
So it would be very difficult to make enough money without standard forms of payment.
Strictly speaking, "standard forms of payment" is a transfer to a bank card number. Now everyone is used to services like PayPal and has already forgotten that they were originally designed not to publish their card number publicly. Developments in bank security and the issue of virtual cards have made these services irrelevant, but the force of habit and mindset inertia is too strong.
But the option of having their own website and a virtual card number for transfers should seem to work. Although, of course, not as successful as the already familiar services.
Well, direct bank transfer is complex and unsafe. You need to know additional information (aside from the number) and it's not protected, like credit cards are. So if you do a wire, and the other person never gives you the product, or disappears, you legally can't get the money back (at least in the US). With a credit card there are many protections for bogus transfers, and you can dispute even a transfer you did make and usually get the money back. Sadly PayPal, and other popular forms of digital currency, are just way easier and more convenient, if you can use them. Crypto was supposed to be the answer, but it doesn't work like it's supposed to. You could also easily lose money on conversion fees or market fluctuations.
Anyhow, this is maybe too off-topic. I guess my point was that, if you want to make money, it's much easier to be on a platform like Steam or Itch. In fact, I see that Itch recently lost PayPal payments (maybe due to the adult content they host) so it's not like anything is guaranteed. But it's a lot more work to sell a game from your own website, then it is to let Steam (or whoever) handle everything for you. And this is why they take the 30%, because there is a lot of business work they are doing for you that would cost you a lot more if you did it yourself.
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By the way, this might seem unrelated, but it is related to how much traffic and interaction one might get depending on which site you sign up to. Some recent news dropped regarding twitter and apparently a whistleblower has come forward confirming what a lot of people have suspected about big tech sites and that is that they fake a lot of their user growth for the sake of appearing bigger than they really are.
This would definitely explain CyberReality's experience of noticing that on Itch there seem to be a greater amount of user interaction on itch compared to other sites. I've had my own suspicions about steam itself for some time now as well and it will be very interesting when the inevitable advertiser lawsuits roll in after the twitter court case concludes what information will find out about big tech sites in general because people are going to ask "If twitter is faking user growth, how many other sites are doing the same to get my ad money?" the answer will be a lot.
For those who have no idea what I am talking about, look up 'dead internet theory'. Do not be fooled by steam and other platforms' shiny claims about user numbers. It's more important for less experienced devs to get real interaction and feedback from their users anyway but I can tell you now on a personal level I have been regularly posting my work on alt-tech and I am getting interaction from randoms I never got on big tech which is confirming a lot of my suspicions about big tech in general. People make the mistake of looking at a site and going "WE'VE GOT 8 MILLION USERS!" and thinking if they get even 1% of that they're going to be millionaires, but how many of those users even post or interact with the site? That is the big question, if they don't then that amount of users may as well not exist and be a lie.
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Lethn dead internet theory
Read a similar text on a German news outlet. The gist there is only a few humongous players dominate the internet and its information flow.
Was it initially meant to enable users to exchange information, and part of it outside of what the mass stares at all day long on their mobile phones is certainly used for such applications, much of it has become a swamp of dumb messaging and misinformation.
cybereality Well, direct bank transfer is complex and unsafe.
Yes, there may be problems with direct transfers.
And this is why they take the 30%, because there is a lot of business work they are doing for you that would cost you a lot more if you did it yourself.
But 30% is clearly too much, three times more than it should be at most. The easy money is corrupting, as we can see from their example.
I see that Itch recently lost PayPal payments
But the documentation says they work with PayPal. Stripe looks quite acceptable, but it's not available here either. Otherwise itch.io would suit me completely.
Okay, so that is definitely a conspiracy theory. However, conspiracies can be real, being a conspiracy does not make it false. For example, Facebook was alleged to be inflating their ad numbers, and actually got sued for it:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/18/tech/facebook-ad-reach-lawsuit/index.html
Twitter is likely doing the same thing. When I look at "trending" topics (which might be manually placed there) I can see somewhere around half the accounts are fake. I don't check all of them, but doing like a spot check of 20 or 30 users, you can see maybe half of them just joined, have only a few posts (or none) and have little to no followers. Usually they post on controversial topics, on both sides, but can also be used for advertisement. This is likely what Twitter is hiding from Musk.
In terms of my own experience, I have around 3,000 followers on Twitter. But I actually only get around the same 50 people interacting with my posts. I also follow around 5,000 people, but always see posts from the same maybe 100 accounts, or see posts from people I don't even follow. I know these people are still active, cause I can search for them and see they post like every day. But I haven't seen a post for them in years, even though we are friends in real life. So the algorithm is carefully curating what I see, and also who sees what I post. Why they are doing this is anyone's guess, and you kind of go into a rabbit hole if you think too long about it.
In terms of Steam lying, it's possible, but it doesn't account for sales. Yes, they could inflate traffic numbers, but I can also see download count, time played, etc. which would be crazy if they were faking all of it. I also doubt bots are buying games, but that is not totally fantasy. For example, Amazon has a huge issue with fake reviews or bot reviews, and it says verified purchase. I know how to spot bots, and it's huge on Amazon. Or they will have real people (like from a competitor) buy a product and give it a bad review, break it and say it's cheap quality and post a picture, etc. I've read some articles that estimate fake reviews on Amazon are anywhere from 25% to 50%, and I would believe that.
I think YouTube is probably a safe website though. Because you can see the people's faces, hear their voice, see how many subs they have, when they joined, how many videos uploaded, etc. There are fake videos, but it is much much harder to fake that. So if you have game reviews on YouTube, Twitch streamers, etc. that is most likely real.
But real people can also have agendas. Like the new Matrix movie got trashed, by the press and by the community. However, the movie was great. One of the best movies ever, and even better than the first one possibly. However, I noticed that there was so much bad press, like unreasonably so. Even if the movie was bad, people were on a vendetta. So I started reading all the reviews on big tech sites. And, sure, I'm not saying everyone has to like the movie. People have different tastes, sure. But there were verifiable lies in the article. One about a voice dubbing mistake that wasn't there (I watched the scene like 10 times, and it didn't happen). Others saying how there were no guns in the movie, which didn't make sense, the whole movie is action packed for 2 hours. Just stuff that was factually wrong. To the point where I thought there was something else going on. I even posted a positive comment about the movie on the official Facebook page and got harassed. People claimed I was actually Lana Wachowski with an alt account. That Warner Bros had paid me to make the comment, and other total nonsense. Like, I understand not everyone likes the same things. But the movie was great, and because I said I liked it, I must have been bribed by Warner Bros? What the hell is going on, I think it's more likely they were paid to attack me, or make the movie look bad. Usually when people make false accusations, it's really them that are the ones that did it.
Tomcat But the documentation says they work with PayPal.
Yes, it seems to be back now. Last time I tried a purchase (a few weeks ago) the button was missing, but maybe it was a temporary issue or they worked it out.
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I agree it's a bit of a conspiracy theory right now, but how often have conspiracy theories ended up being proven right a couple of months down the line? A surprising amount, everyone's buzzing about nonsense around Trump right now as per usual to distract from what I feel is the real news story and that's the lawsuit around twitter's fakery.
If twitter loses the court case, it's going to blow them and all the other big tech sites wide open, this will then lead to advertiser lawsuits and further investigations into other companies. While I don't think that all the traffic is fake on steam and other places, I think there is going to be a greater percentage than even paranoid people like me think potentially. I was very surprised for example when there was a fake account wiping happening on twitter that even Taylor Swift's account lost about 10,000 followers, that's more than I was expecting on a fairly innocuous brand name. If this is the case then perhaps it wouldn't even be a stretch to say that music labels were somehow paying for these fake followers to boost themselves onto the trending pages.
Even if the big tech sites aren't all directly involved in bot follower shenanigans and fakery, they certainly don't clamp down on it as they should to make sure their traffic is legitimate.
Lethn If twitter loses the court case, it's going to blow them and all the other big tech sites wide open, this will then lead to advertiser lawsuits and further investigations into other companies.
Well, shaking up the swamp would be useful.
cybereality In terms of my own experience, I have around 3,000 followers on Twitter. But I actually only get around the same 50 people interacting with my posts
In reality, if very roughly and approximately: 1000 people browse, 100 comment from time to time, 10 actively discuss, 1 can really help. Well yes, it looks like it.