How much revenue has Dayz pulled in for Bohemia Interactive Studio?

[Jarnis 43]

It is pretty well known that usually Steam takes 30% of the retail price. Sure, they may have special negotiated deals with some publishers/developers, but the for vast majority of games the cut is reportedly 30%.

So if a game sells for $20, steam takes $6 and publisher/developer gets $14. I can't recall what the Arma II Combined Ops price is on Steam but I would guess that Bohemia would be getting $14 or more per copy. Feel free to check and do your own math.

Boxed copies are much worse. Retailers and distributors take a much larger slice there. After factoring that and the price of manufacturing and shipping physical boxes, a developer rarely sees even 30% of the retail price (depends really a lot on the publishing deal, retail boxes are almost never self-published by the developer). So Steam is much much better in this regard.

Other digital distribution platforms are reportedly fairly close to Steam as far as the cut is concerned. So something like 25%-30% of the price. Naturally when publisher/developer does direct sales, that's 100% groovy for them (minus the costs of billing and running a store - neither is actually free).

Feel free to go and perform some guessimates... my wild guess would be "millions of dollars". Of course it wasn't free to develop Arma II so this is revenue, not profit.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Jarnis

[TheDee (DayZ) 9]

It's just because i think, that when i enjoy a game, i don't care about the profit that the developers, builders, mooders, whatever you'd like to call them do.

That's just not up to the players, i just enjoy the game, nothing more. As long as we have something to get entertained about, why should we care about how much money they make?

I just wanna point out that as a gamer you need to care about how much money your favourite developers make from sales and get from publishers, if you don't they could end up getting fucked over like they are now and be forced to go under and stop making games. If that where to ever happen the gamers and developers need to work together in fixing it. So there is a 100% valid reason for wanting to know how much money they made from Dayz. Don't be such a cunt next time.

[jdotjdot7 6]

I think it's awesome that this great company got a huge boost in sales. They really deserve it. I was wondering if anyone had any numbers on the sales? I know some people buy off the site itself not just steam.

Another question, I heard once that Rocket was hired by them? I hope this is true as well!

900,000 DayZ Players, Multiply that by an average of $25 per sale and you get 22.5 MILLION USD

[thekaiser (DayZ) 17]

900,000 DayZ Players, Multiply that by an average of $25 per sale and you get 22.5 MILLION USD

*facepalm*

[Flurf 25]

*facepalm*

Yay for no expenses! Excuse me, commissions! :P

Edited July 28, 2012 by Flurf

[sudZ! 115]

Whoever owns the license for the product will be making A LOT more than .08 on $16 purchases. If they're making that little they need to sue the lawyers who recommended they sign that contract with the distributor(s).

If a distributor is earning over 40% you're getting completely hosed, no matter what business you're in... if you're only making a .005% profit on each product you sell you're either severely mentally deficient, or someone fraudulenty misrep'd something.

or you need a new COO because your overhead needs to be a loooooooooot lower!

Edited July 28, 2012 by sudZ!

[Flurf 25]

Whoever owns the license for the product will be making A LOT more than .08 on $16 purchases. If they're making that little they need to sue the lawyers who recommended they sign that contract with the distributor(s).

If a distributor is earning over 40% you're getting completely hosed, no matter what business you're in... if you're only making a .005% profit on each product you sell you're either severely mentally deficient, or someone fraudulenty misrep'd something.

or you need a new COO because your overhead needs to be a loooooooooot lower!

Yea, all I can find about their commission is something between 7-15%. It varies between the type of good and seller though.

[Barronism 88]

Publishers really screw the pooch here. They take some times like 75% of the profits. I know EA does, they're disgusting.

From what I remember they took close to like 90% of the profits for Kingdom of Amular and the creators of KoA ended up having to file for bankruptcy.

[Flurf 25]

Publishers really screw the pooch here. They take some times like 75% of the profits. I know EA does, they're disgusting.

From what I remember they took close to like 90% of the profits for Kingdom of Amular and the creators of KoA ended up having to file for bankruptcy.

Holy crap, I can't imagine ever agreeing to that high of a commission.

[Jarnis 43]

Publishers really screw the pooch here. They take some times like 75% of the profits. I know EA does, they're disgusting.

From what I remember they took close to like 90% of the profits for Kingdom of Amular and the creators of KoA ended up having to file for bankruptcy.

That kind of deal happens only if the publisher (in this case EA) pays a huge advance - probably tens of millions - and applies only until that advance is "paid back". In the case of Amalur, it never sold enough to pay back the massive advance they got so almost everything went to EA, EA still took a loss and as for 38 studios, well...

Edited July 28, 2012 by Jarnis

[Jarnis 43]

900,000 DayZ Players, Multiply that by an average of $25 per sale and you get 22.5 MILLION USD

That is probably a high estimate, ignores existing owners of Arma II and only includes revenue - it is all gravy only after all the bills are paid.

Still, I'm guessing Bohemia has pulled several millions (perhaps even over 10 million) of revenue from people who exclusively bought Arma II to play DayZ. That is a significant chunk of money.

[kozzy420 39]

Hundreds of thousands have bought the game (not even just one game, technically) for DayZ. No doubt there. It's just easy to overestimate how much money you get from old games selling. Steam has the upper hand in negotiations, because you could sell your game and get peanuts, or you could not sell your game on Steam and get nothing. Margins shrink like Costanzas when sales are involved.

Steam gets 30% of games sales on steam.

As for Amazon,etc.. I have no clue, but as far as steam goes they get 30% I am 100% sure on this.

Edited July 28, 2012 by kozzy

[Ideology 1]

Let's do some math.

Approximate number of unique DayZ players = 800,000 (assume this is equivalent to the total copies of ARMA2 sold)

Now assume 20% were full price sales (general box or digital retails), 40% were bought on Amazon during sales, and 40% were bought on Steam during sales.

So for where the copies came from, we have:

Full Price = 20% of 800,000 = 160,000 copies

Amazon during Sales = 40% of 800,000 = 320,000 copies

Steam during Sales = 40% of 800,000 = 320,000 copies

Now we will assume that the Recommended Retail Price of ARMA2 = $30 USD

We will also assume that Bohemia Interactive makes the following revenue from each type of sale:

Full Price = 20% revenue

Amazon Sale = 0.08 USD per sale

Steam Sale = 70% revenue

As for Steam Sales, we will also assume that the copies are sold at 40% off of the RRP.

Therefore for each type of sale, we can apply the following formula:

Revenue in USD = # of copies sold * RRP * % of Bohemia's Cut OR in the case of Amazon = # of copies sold * 0.08 USD

So we have the following:

Full Price = 160,000 * 30 * 20% = $960,000

Amazon Sale = 320,000 * 0.08 = $25,600

Steam Sale = 320,000 * ((1-0.4)*30) * 0.7 = $4,032,000

Total Revenue from Sales = $5,017,600

BUT that is only revenue, we haven't accounted for any internal or production costs yet.

Bohemia Interactive employ approximately 140 people. I would think it is a fair assumption to say the average wage at the company is $40,000 USD (although not being well acquainted with the industry, this is a complete guess on my part).

Therefore total employee costs per annum = 140 * 40,000 = $5,600,000

Already, with my estimate you can see that they use up their revenue from 3 years worth of sales on ARMA2 in only one year of paying their employees. I haven't even accounted for production, capital and liscencing costs yet. However, I haven't accounted for other means of revenue that they have in their company, as they do have a few other services that they provide. Also, I should note that a lot of my assumptions are very broad, and are only for the sake of getting a 'ball park figure' for how their bank balance has changed due to DayZ. Without knowing the inner workings of the company, or at least the industry, it is difficult for any layman to make an educated guess.

tl;dr - Even with these massive sales they are definitely not 'striking it rich'.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Ideology

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

It's just because i think, that when i enjoy a game, i don't care about the profit that the developers, builders, mooders, whatever you'd like to call them do.

That's just not up to the players, i just enjoy the game, nothing more. As long as we have something to get entertained about, why should we care about how much money they make?

Because developers use the money they make to fund future projects which you might also be interested in?

So if you really like an amazingly awesome game from a developer, you should care whether or not they are making enough money to come along and improve upon the game, release updates, and perhaps one day even another game for you to play.

Same reason you shouldn't pirate games you like, but that's a while different discussion.

[Rayth 12]

Well shit, I hope SOMEONE is striking it rich over DayZ.

Amazon, I guess?

No, wait... fuck them.

[morgan 2]

I don't think the actual amount of revenue is as important as whatever their sales numbers were since DayZ released they would have sold at best 5% of that number in the same time frame without DayZ. Let's be honest, pretty much everyone who wanted ArmA2 and it's expansions to play ArmA 2 and it's expansions already had it before DayZ released.

[thetimmi@yahoo.de 3]

So can anyone tell me whats wrong with bohamian?? We all KNOW arma was sold many,many,many,many,many times more just cause of dayZ!

So why the **** is there an patch for arma, effecting DayZ really bad, but was made for arma, not for DayZ!?? I dont get it! Makes me even a little angry!

BTW: I talking about the Weapon nerf!!!

[Barronism 88]

Let's do some math.

Approximate number of unique DayZ players = 800,000 (assume this is equivalent to the total copies of ARMA2 sold)

Now assume 20% were full price sales (general box or digital retails), 40% were bought on Amazon during sales, and 40% were bought on Steam during sales.

So for where the copies came from, we have:

Full Price = 20% of 800,000 = 160,000 copies

Amazon during Sales = 40% of 800,000 = 320,000 copies

Steam during Sales = 40% of 800,000 = 320,000 copies

Now we will assume that the Recommended Retail Price of ARMA2 = $30 USD

We will also assume that Bohemia Interactive makes the following revenue from each type of sale:

Full Price = 20% revenue

Amazon Sale = 0.08 USD per sale

Steam Sale = 70% revenue

As for Steam Sales, we will also assume that the copies are sold at 40% off of the RRP.

Therefore for each type of sale, we can apply the following formula:

Revenue in USD = # of copies sold * RRP * % of Bohemia's Cut OR in the case of Amazon = # of copies sold * 0.08 USD

So we have the following:

Full Price = 160,000 * 30 * 20% = $960,000

Amazon Sale = 320,000 * 0.08 = $25,600

Steam Sale = 320,000 * ((1-0.4)*30) * 0.7 = $4,032,000

Total Revenue from Sales = $5,017,600

BUT that is only revenue, we haven't accounted for any internal or production costs yet.

Bohemia Interactive employ approximately 140 people. I would think it is a fair assumption to say the average wage at the company is $40,000 USD (although not being well acquainted with the industry, this is a complete guess on my part).

Therefore total employee costs per annum = 140 * 40,000 = $5,600,000

Already, with my estimate you can see that they use up their revenue from 3 years worth of sales on ARMA2 in only one year of paying their employees. I haven't even accounted for production, capital and liscencing costs yet. However, I haven't accounted for other means of revenue that they have in their company, as they do have a few other services that they provide. Also, I should note that a lot of my assumptions are very broad, and are only for the sake of getting a 'ball park figure' for how their bank balance has changed due to DayZ. Without knowing the inner workings of the company, or at least the industry, it is difficult for any layman to make an educated guess.

tl;dr - Even with these massive sales they are definitely not 'striking it rich'.

They have a lot of DLC, as well as the 880,000 you mentioned was only what was sold for Dayz. According to Marek Spanel, a member of BI, sales have gone up 500% because of Dayz. That is still over 175k sales pre-dayz. Though which distribution system they used will determine how much they made from it.

Also, video games usually don't pay their employees 40k a year, I think a closer estimate of around $25-30k would be more accurate for most of the employees. Obviously higher ups would make more, but the mass would make less than $40k. We must remember there are customer service employees and non game developer employees that would make up most of their work force.

[Jarnis 43]

The "Amazon Sale" 0.08 cents is almost certainly bogus and so is the amazon/steam ratio (steam probably sold a lot more) so your result is way low. I would imagine the real revenue would be closer to 10 million. Still, your final conclusion is probably accurate; they are making good money but they are not swimming in it. And if they have any sense, they are investing a lot of that into making new games anyway... If DayZ popularity means that they can hire a few more people to make Arma 3 (and the engine for it) better while also supporting and updating the old Arma 2 codebase for DayZ in the near-term, it's all good.

[Jachim 22]

What I'm curious about is if Rocket has gotten offers by Bohemia to take over Day Z production maybe with him as lead designer

[Forseti (DayZ) 5]

maybe with all the money that they made from dayz, the next arma engine won't be coded nearly as badly. Not a great economical standpoint to make a game require so much power to deliver competitve graphics, nevermind the ungodly amount of mechanical (read:technical) quirks that have preceeded dayz.

If they dont get their shit together and arma 3 is the arma 2 of its era, I will not buy arma 3. Even if they try to "steal" money by shutting down dayz after arma 3 release. No excuses for such a power hungry engine that offers little for what it consumes in the competitive market.

[bearbeat 2]

I hope they do not fail. Like WarZ did,.

[OrLoK 16182]

A little bit of a necro. check dates.