Before the release Slither.io 32-year-old developer Steven Hosie (Steven Howse) could barely pay for an apartment, writes The Wall Street Journal. Now the author of the project receives $100 thousand a day from the game.
A little background: the idea to launch the project appeared to Hosy many years ago, but finally took shape when he saw Agar.io . After 6 months of development (and financial difficulties), the Slither.io . The game, where a slug moves across the screen and eats glowing sparks, was released on March 10.
At the time of the game’s release, Hosy was broke. The developer hardly paid rent for the apartment. “If the idea with Slither.io it wouldn’t have worked, I would have gone to work in a supermarket,” he shares.
Hosy says that after 6 months of development, there is no money left for marketing. So to promote the project, he just sent a link to the game to letsplayers. Among which was PewDiePie.
Letsplay Slither.io from PewDiePie
After that, the game “took off”.
In the first month, downloads reached 4 million worldwide, and App Annie named the project the most downloaded game in April. However, this did not bring much happiness to Hosie: due to the fact that there was no monetization in the game for a long time, the income for that period was only $ 72 thousand.
Hozi set up monetization: added ads that are played after a loss, and the ability to turn off these videos ($3.99). The developer spends less than 1 cent from each viewing. However, the DAU of the game is 67 million only from the browser version, so the result is impressive. Khozi refuses to give a specific figure, but says that he receives 100 thousand every day, and the total profit is calculated “in the amount of 7 zeros.” Even taking into account the fact that the developer monthly deducts a percentage of Apple and Google’s income and 15 thousand hosting servers.
At the moment, the number of downloads has exceeded 20 million in the USA alone. All over the world Slither.io downloaded 68 million times on mobile. In terms of downloads, the title took first place on iOS and Google Play in the USA for May. The project already has clones, of which one of the most successful was the game Snakeio. The project was ranked 10th in downloads on iOS.
Now Hozi is considering selling the project. The developer received three offers – two from major gaming companies and one from a firm specializing in venture capital investments.
In general, Hozi views the experience as “stressful”. However, he does not deny that many would like to be in his place.
Source: The Wall Street Journal