Monument Valley: Spend Money to Make Money

Developers of Monument Valley (MV) published an extensive infographic, covering the sales and the performance of their architectural puzzle.

According to the official post the game generated over 2.4 million sales and earned over 5.8 million USD. The majority of the sales and the revenue (80+ percent) came from iOS. The other platforms were less profitable.

The game was heavily pirated. Monument Valley was installed on 10 million devices, which is much higher than the official sales. A couple of weeks before Ustwo shared their concerns over piracy on Android-based platforms. After the Android-release the piracy rate of MV was about 95%.

The sales in different periods of the game’s history differed greatly. Monument Valley was most successful on its release day, when it grossed $145.530. This was the biggest day for the game. Among other spikes are Android Release, Apple Design Award, iOS Sale and the release day of the Forgotten Shores DLC. Only 24% of Monument Valley players actually bought the DLC.

The game was especially big in USA (38%), United Kingdom (5%), China (12%), Japan (4.4%) and Russia (3.6%). Although the puzzle was pretty expensive for a mobile title only 50% of users actually completed it.

Ustwo also disclosed the official budget of the game and boy it’s not cheap. The initial project’s development costs was $852,000 (55 weeks). The Forgotten Shores paid DLC took another $549,000 and 29 weeks. The core team of the game consists of 8 people only. This is a huge budget for an indie title and for an investor-supported product.

Monument Valley proved once again that to make an AAA-title the studio should be ready to spend a million+ USD. No wonder the company decided to sell the Forgotten Shores DLC and not to give it away for free, like many mobile developers do.

Source: Monumet Valley Development Blog

• Full Infographic

Author: Ulyana Chernyak