For many years until today i’ve been believing that the emulator developers are poor geniuses working so hard totally for free and just for fun, just because they want to play their past glories again in the future decades, and make other fans do the same.
And i believed so because you cannot monetize an emulator neither by selling it (would be piracy), nor by putting advertisement in the software (ad networks won’t let you be their ad publisher with a pirate/warez software).
I’ve only seen a bunch of Adsense banners here and there just in the official emulator websites, but those are money-crumbs compared to what it takes to support a massive full-time job like that.
But now i’ve just found out that emulator devs actually can monetize their work in some way and they are also well paid for it: they apparently make tons of money from donations!
Indeed i’ve stumbled upon the WiiU emulator website which is WIP now, and from the Donate section it links their Patreon page. I’ve checked their Patreon just to see how much they get from donations, and here are some numbers:
578 backers paying 1$/month (or more)
6870 backers paying 5$/month (or more)
170 backers paying 10$/month (or more)
Total: 36628$ / month (or more)
Not bad, huh?
Now i don’t know how many developers are in that team, i guess they likely are about 5-6
but even if they are 10 people they still get 3600$ / month each, which can be considered a serious salary for many.
I’m seriously thinking about getting involved in that field, as i’m already an experienced coder.
It would be great fun and profit. If any of you wants to plan an emulator dev team, let me know
What do you think?
Of course those numbers above are only interesting if the team in question is not larger than 30 people…which would be like 1200$ / month per person… but i doubt it is such a giant team!
I need to collect more stats & info about this topic to know for sure if it can be a well paid full-time job, but it looks promising xD
These are probably the only emulator developers working outside of enterprise or commercial software to ever make any money. I think you’re forgetting how many emulators there have been, exactly.
Patreon takes a cut and has multiple fees, plus there’s I think an extra fee by credit card companies, which, I think, amounts to 12%. Basically, from that $36k sum, $4395 doesn’t make it to the developers.
On top of that there will be taxes, currency conversion fees, etc.
Also, don’t forget the community building thing and attracting people. Then there’s a matter of popularity - WiiU is a relativley new console, so unless you’re making a PS4 emulator, you are unlikely to gather this kind of crowd.
Looks like before that, it was around $5900 per month. Quite the big jump there. That’s more about Breath of the Wild than about emulation in general, I think.
I see, we should know exactly how much Patreon holds for itself and how much is the expense for community building , marketing, etc.
But you said that WiiU is relatively new and they are the first team trying to emulate it, so that should generate hype by itsels without the need to spend thousands of $ in marketing.
Because many gamers are there that do not want to spend a lot of money to buy the console and original games, and prefer to give 5-10 bucks to the emu makers and wait for the emulator to be finished i guess.
Or you are saying that people only desire an emulator when the console is out of market? I would not bet on it…
Also, the Patreon page itself displays the total amount per month, and you’re high by 10 grand.
And further, keep in mind that there’s no guarantee that these people are going to continue to pay for this for years, like you would need for a real job.
I really doubt they had to pay them for the article. Every PC gaming website was tripping over their own feet to publish articles about BotW in the wake of its release.
Strange, i have calculated the total from the right column, for example: Early Access
$5 or more per month ∙ 6867 patrons
6867 x 5 = 34335 just counting the $5 backers… so the total displayed by Patreon is lower maybe due to the applied commissions.
You think a magazine gives you exposure for free like that?
If they wanted to talk about Zelda they could just put a game guide made by themselves for a particular level for example, no need to make others a favor by advertising them for free.
7 years ago i had a site that enabled people to play Flash games on a Wii browser, and i’ve asked a few game magazines for a review … all of them asked me to pay the article despite the topic was the Wii, which generates visits for the magazine, just like you said that Zelda generates visits for PCGamer…
but that was not enough for them to write me an article for free.
Yes. A magazine usually doesn’t wanna die, so they’ll ride on a hot new trend to maintain popularity. Since Zelda release is a BIG thing, everybody and their mother will try to post something about it, for free, simply to attract people.
Basically… when you’re Nintendo, you don’t need exposure.
Zelda is a Nintendo franchise. Nintendo certainly isn’t paying a PC gaming website to talk about their game (which cannot be played “normally” on a PC).
You might be right. So we might infer that someone on Patreon keeps 26853/36615 of what they make, or 73%. Just a guess though.
Actually… i was talking about the Cemu dev team, not Nintendo.
Cemu devs are the ones that would have benefited from the exposure and PCGamer knew it for sure,.
I bet it was a well paid article
Yes. Any exposure a magazine brings you will first bring them exposure. After all you can’t exactly visit the site they mentioned if you haven’t at least opened their article and read through it to find the link. In the process of reading it the advertisements will register that they’ve been viewed.
LOL i don’t think so, more likely the other way around: 26853 is the Cemu’s net gain, while 10k bucks go to Patreon, like 27%
Otherwise nobody would use Patreon
By the way none of these news articles would have had to actively search for the original video. Simply signing up for an account with YouTube and subscribing to channels known for valuable announcements would have done the job.
Same passive gathering method works great with Reddit, most forums, and any website with an RSS feed.
I think it is unlikely and find the idea strange. If it was one guy writing game articles in the middle of nowhere, it could happen (with zero effect, by the way), but PC gamer most likely have operational costs much higher than patreon income of Cemu.
I find @Ryiah 's explanation much more plausible. (Meaning someone tried Breath of the Wild on Cemu, it worked, and then the video became a hit).
