How I participated in IndieGala and what I learned from it

Surely, many have heard about the so-called “bundles” - events, the organizers of which collect several different games in one pack and sell through Pay What You Want . The resulting money is divided between developers, organizers and charitable companies. Wolfire Games with their most popular Humble Indie Bundle is the most prominent representative of the bandle organizing company. In addition, there are bandlers like Indie Royale and Indie Gala . I would like to share my experience with Indie Gala with you.

If you are interested in how you can include your game in the bundle, how the organization of this event takes place and, of course, the process of paying developers, please under the cat.

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How it all began

So, in early April my Spin Deluxe game, which I wrote earlier, came out. I laid out the game on Desura and for a short time forgot about it. Having opened the statistics of downloads and sales in July, I was a little disappointed - my earnings were only about $ 50 (While payments are made at savings of more than $ 500), and downloads of the demo version were less than a hundred. Thinking about changing the situation, I found a list of Internet services for selling games and sent information about the game to many of them. Reasonable answers came literally from a couple of services, including Steam. And they all contained a polite refusal. It was then that I remembered the bandles. I sent a proposal to include the game in organizations such as the Humble Indie Bundle, Indie Royale and Indie Gala. The answer came only from Indie Royale and lay in the fact that they do not have empty seats and I should wait, which probably was analogous to the phrase "We will call you back." “So it’s not destiny,” I thought, and set to work on another project.

Unexpected turn

What I really didn’t expect - so the letter from Indie Gala Support on July 17th. It included the offer to read and fill out the contract attached to the letter, as well as generate 40 thousand keys for Desura and send them in a reply letter, which I successfully managed during the next hour.
The next day (!) Began Indie Gala Mobile 2, which includes 6 games for Android and 3 games for PC, including Spin Deluxe. It looked like this .

How did it go

The bundle was active for 7 days from July 18 to July 25 inclusive, during which time 19,155.33 dollars were raised, which is quite a bit, but not bad considering the subject (Mostly mobile games) and the small popularity of this bundle. The main amount (About 12 thousand, as I recall) was collected on the first day (Sometimes earnings were about one hundred dollars per hour). It should be noted that Indie Gala’s technical support is very good, all my questions were answered literally within 24 hours.

How did it end

6 days after the end of the event, on July 31, I received a detailed report on the funds raised and the amount of my share, taking into account the percentage specified in the contract. According to the Pay What You Want system, buyers themselves determine how much money goes to developers, and this time it was 64.4%, but, as explained in the letter, they rounded this number to 70%, since all participants were small developers, Yes, and the amount was small. Taking into account the 10% of the amount paid to developers in the contract, my share was $ 1,340.87 (Which is quite good for a seventeen-year-old student, I think).

Results and conclusions

A few days later I opened a currency account for the card and sent an invoice with its details. Earned money came in 3 days. Having looked at the download statistics in Desura, I was pleasantly surprised - about 900 keys were activated and a little more than two hundred copies of the full version were downloaded.

Download Schedule:


Schedule of visits to the game page:


As a result, I did not invest a penny in this event and received a good amount of money for me, the number of downloads in 7 days, twice the number of downloads in 3 months and a very useful experience.