How do I know if my game needs investors?

Help and Feedback Game Design Support
#1

Hello,

I have a game, Business Simulator 2, that can potentially appeal to investors. Don’t worry, I will make an informative post on it should I decide to look for investors - other posts looking for investors that I’ve seen don’t really go into detail on how an investor would benefit, what their goals are for the game, etc but I’ll make sure mine will be informative and appealing.

The thing is, I’m not sure if I need investors. On one hand, investors could be the key to opening the door to success as robux is needed for advertisements, better graphics, sound etc.

On the other hand, my game might not need investors to profit. We (the development studio for the game) sponsored the game for 10k on PC and 5k on mobile a few days ago. Here are the stats:

NOTE: GameAnalytics stats shown is most likely more accurate than Roblox Developer Stats as GameAnalytics stats are suited to my timezone and the sponsor started at 3.47 am on Aug 1, my timezone. In addition, stats shown for August 4 is incomplete as it is currently 4 pm at the time of writing this post.

Player Count

GameAnalytics reported 17,752 new users on the day of sponsor, with a total of 30,410 new users from Aug 1 to the time of writing this post

Game Analytics reported a session count of 23,788 on the day of the sponsor (a session is basically a visit- a session starts when the player joins and ends when the player leaves the game, not including teleporting (which is irrelevant to my game as there is no teleportation between places)), with a total session count of 52,990 from Aug 1 to the time of writing this post

Peaked at 392 players playing, taken from blade (red line is when sponsor stopped):

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Engangement

Roblox Developer Stats reported an average visit length of 12.71 minutes on the day of the sponsor, and it more than doubled days after (probably because there are less new users leaving the game within minutes):

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GameAnalytics reported an average session length of 869.79 seconds (14.5 minutes) on the day of the sponsor, increasing a day after to 1049.10 seconds (17.49 minutes)

GameAnalytics reported an average of 15.58% retention rate (retention is defined as The percent of users who showed up again X days after installing the game on GameAnalytics, in our case it’s the percent of users who showed up again X days after joining the game for the first time)

Monetisation

NOTE: Roblox Developer Stats is more accurate for tracking monetisation statistics because GameAnalytics only tracks purchases made while in-game

From Roblox Developer Stats, I calculated that R$22,055 (after tax: R$15,438) was earned from the minute the sponsor started to the minute it ended, with a total revenue of R$39,960 (after tax: R$27,972) from the minute the sponsor started to the time of writing this post

The revenue (R$22,055) per session count (23,788) during the sponsor is R$0.927 (after tax: R$0.649)

The revenue (R$39,960) per session count (52,990) from the minute the sponsor started to the time of writing this post is R$0.754 (after tax: R$0.528)

Using the Roblox Group Admin Revenue tab, I counted (using code of course) that there were 45 unique paying users during the sponsor, and 112 unique paying users from the minute the sponsor started to the time of writing this post

The revenue (R$22,055) per unique paying user (45) during the sponsor is R$490.11 (after tax: R$343.08)

The revenue (R$39,960) per unique paying user (112) from the minute the sponsor started to the time of writing this post is R$356.79 (after tax: R$249.75)

GameAnalytics reported an average of 0.17% conversion rate (conversion rate is defined as The percent of your users who made a purchase on that day on GameAnalytics) from the day the sponsor started to the time of writing this post

This may be inaccurate due to the discrepancy mentioned earlier, where GameAnalytics only records purchases made in-game

Using my manual count of 112 unique paying users and 54,457 unique users from GameAnalytics, the conversion rate is 0.21% from the minute the sponsor started to the time of writing this post

Our total revenue during the sponsor is R$22,055 (after tax: R$15,438), so we profited R$15,438 - R$15,000 = R$438

Our total revenue from the minute the sponsor started to the time of writing this post is R$39,960 (after tax: R$27,972), so we profited R$27,972 - R$15,000 = R$12,972

We earned 186.48% more robux than we spent. So if we don’t rely on investors and spend the money we earned on sponsors again, we’re likely to profit again (considering what we have planned for the game too), and the revenue will all belong to us

If we get investors to invest, we might profit, but the profit that belongs to us might not be as much as it would be if we just used our revenue to advertise the game

However, we might profit more if we have investors, causing the profit that belongs to us to be greater than if we just used our revenue to advertise the game

I’m in a tough dilemma. I’m not sure whether I need investors to profit more from the game.

Do you guys think I need investors? Why or why not?

9 Likes
#2

I don’t have any experience in game investment here in Roblox(-1 credibility) but I do take business specialization classes(+1 credibility). But here’s what I can say;

Your game does not need investors. Your game has already started successfully and has a positive cash flow. Some people need investors to fund the startup of their game or their high ambitions. What should be addressed here if whether you really want investors or not.

Your studio is financially capable of funding the game by itself. Keep investing a set amount from your profits(15-20k robux or something) and put the balance in your group funds. Just be patient and after a few weeks or a month you would see considerable growth in your profits. As stated before, business takes patience, do not base your game’s income just from a couple day statistics.

Although investors would give you a considerable amount of capital for funding developers or ads, they would in turn expect equal returns of the result their investment made. They are not a necessity unless you are expanding to another game or want funding for an ambitious project. So I suggest you take it slowly.

6 Likes
#3

Investors are only needed when you don’t have enough money to even start the ads or you’re not profiting off the ads so you need to invest more money in the game.
As long as you’re in positive cash flow, you can just keep doing ads while improving your game.

From what I see, your Retention is rather low, with only ~5% of people coming back to your game.
It’s often the case in games that don’t feature some sort of saving, as people don’t wish to come back and start from scratch (not sure if this is your case).

Instead of getting investors, I’d personally keep improving sections of the game which may add to player retention, and advertise game every now and then to see whether you’re doing everything right.

2 Likes
#4

Thank you for the advice. This is the first game I’ve worked on that has actually made revenue so I’m a complete noob when it comes to business. I definitely should take it slowly, I realised I’ve been trying to rush things when, as you mentioned, business takes patience.

I don’t completely agree with this statement. If you’re not profiting off ads, why would investors invest in your game in the first place?

From what I see, your Retention is rather low, with only ~5% of people coming back to your game.

The 5% you saw was for day 2 and 3 retention - which means that only 5% of the players 2 - 3 days before July 31 and Aug 1 (before the sponsor) joined the game again. There’s not enough data yet to see day 2+ retention to see how retention is like after sponsoring. Before I sponsored the game, I created an interactive tutorial which I believe increased player count, retention and average visit length. This is because day 1 retention increased by 7% after the sponsor:

It’s often the case in games that don’t feature some sort of saving, as people don’t wish to come back and start from scratch (not sure if this is your case).

The game saves data.

I’d personally keep improving sections of the game which may add to player retention

I also added a daily reward feature before sponsoring the game. I think the game has enough content to retain players for a few days, and we’re adding a new Adventure soon so that players have a new goal to work towards. We have more features planned to improve engagement.

You should give the game a try. It’s very simple to play, especially with the addition of the interactive tutorial.

Thank you for your feedback!

1 Like
#5

Ah, that’s the key. Is the game retaining any players without sponsors running?

If not, spending more on ads will only increase your playerbase for a short time, and if nobody is playing your game right now, nobody will be when the sponsors end. 10K R$ should be enough to see if your game will actually make it or not. If it seems to be doing fine and you’re making money, just run small sponsors yourself. There’s virtually no reason to have someone “invest” in your game on Roblox.

2 Likes
#6

Your game seems to be retaining a good amount of players without sponsors, which is a step forward to success. I actually tried the game and it’s wonderful! If you keep on maintaining the game and the studio does not need any additional developers to do it, I don’t think you will ever need an investor.

Since you made your money back and have a little bonus with that, you can continue advertising your game with your own funds and will eventually be able to afford better graphic designs if you think that’s what you need to attract more players to the game, but there’s no hurry here and as someone said above, business takes patience.

I hope that helps!

1 Like
#7

Hello. If your game is making profit, and you have enough to run ads, you probably don’t need an investor. Also, I noticed that the menu looked extremely similar to the one in AdCap. AdCap:

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Your game:
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I feel like you should try to make it look less similar to the one in AdCap.

#8

Basically everything everyone else is saying, but if you’re making profit you do not need an investor.

Time for my opinion. I think that investors bury yourself in an unnecessary hole - I really can’t think of a reason to need an investor. A lot of investors require a significant percent of revenue even after they’ve been paid back for their investment.

My personal experience can back this up. Here are my statistics from sponsoring:

Sponsor day 1 (first day of release)

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We made just under 50,000 Robux on release day, accounting for the marketplace fee it comes out to around 35,000 Robux. That first day we sponsored 7,500 Robux, so with the fee included we made back 466% of our total investment.

Our development team previously had no traction before this game. This was our first game, but we were able to get a very small following of about 70 people in our Discord server through showing previews of our game on Reddit and Twitter.

Total up to now

Since release day, our game has died off a good amount. Like @Intended_Pun said, if your game isn’t very engaging, there isn’t a reason for people to keep playing. I’ll be the first to admit that the gameplay in my game is very dry.

That said, we still have yet to have a day where our Robux per visit is less than 1, or we don’t profit on a sponsor.

The grand total for up to now (We released on Sep. 6) is 311,406 Robux.. If I take out all that we’ve spent on sponsoring, so just profit, it comes out to 238,392 Robux. In total, we’ve sponsored about 79,000 Robux. The largest sponsor we ever did was 13,500 Robux. Every other sponsor was spread across multiple days, although I’m not sure if that’s the best strategy.

The graph so far looks like this (The spike in early October is when we released the first major update)

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The bottom line from everything included in those two sections is that I wouldn’t be very happy if we decided to get an investor for our first game. You saw how much we were able to do with just 7,500 Robux.

2 Likes
#9

Thats very interesting that u got so much profit out of 7.5k.
May I see the game?

#10

https://www.roblox.com/games/3454641910/Liftoff-UPDATE?refPageId=fc696c7e-abd4-44e8-91d0-045546690ffd

Yeah, it surprised us too. We actually expected to not even break even since we didn’t have a following and it was our first game. The game is more or less dead now, but you can check it out.