Designer Royalties with Real Numbers

Don't quit your day job, unless...

How much money can a game designer make? Can it be a full time job? Well, let me share the royalty payments that both Kevin Bertram (me) and Tory Brown (with her permission) have received from Fort Circle Games. As a side note, although I am the owner of Fort Circle Games, I have a contract for each game and pay myself royalties. I do this because if Fort Circle Games is ever acquired, I want my rights to those games memorialized and to continue receiving royalty payments while I sail my yacht around the Caribbean.

For contracts with Fort Circle we set aside 10% of sales for royalty payments. For The Shores of Tripoli, I was both designer and developer so 8% of sales are paid to me and 2% are paid to our charitable partner, Toys for Tots. For Votes for Women, Tory as the designer receives 6%, as the developer I receive 2%, and the League of Women Voters receives 2%. For The Halls of Montezuma, I receive 5% (3% as co-designer and 2% as developer), my co-designer Gilberto Lopez receives 3%, and Toys for Tots receives 2%. For Shakespeare’s First Folio, I receive 6% (my wife is the co-designer but the money goes into the same family pool of money so for ease only I am on the contract) and the Folger Shakespeare Library receives 4% (this is higher than our normal 2% charitable donation because of their significant assistance in the development of the game).

These royalty percentages are based on the sale price of each copy. Using Votes for Women as an example, if a copy sells on our website for $75, Tory receives $4.50 and I receive $1.50. If a copy is sold to a retailer at a 50% discount, the company receives $37.50 and thus Tory receives $2.25 and I receive $0.75. If we give a game away to a school or a library or as a review copy, the royalty payment is $0. As of December 25, 2025, we have sold 8016 copies of Votes for Women for $463,575.10 - an average sale price of $57.83. We are out of stock of Votes for Women, so of the 8400 printed between two print runs we also gave away 384 copies.

For localization and digital revenue, 40% is set aside for royalty payments. The only revenue of this type so far has been Devir’s localization of Votes for Women into Spanish. Tory receives 30% and I receive 10%. We do not make charitable contributions from this additional revenue - although we may revisit this in the future. Our initial payment from Devir was for $3185, so Tory received $955.50 and I received $318.50.

From 2019 to 2025 I have made $31,488.47. My highest year of royalty payment was in 2023 of $12,635.85. From 2020 to 2025, Tory has made $28,770.01. Her highest year of royalty payment was in 2024 of $14,538.30.

Can you make enough money as a game designer? Not on the numbers above, but there seem to be two scenarios where it is possible.

The first scenario is to have a big hit. Let’s say Shakespeare’s First Folio is a big hit and sells 100,000 copies in the first year at $40 average sale price. Six percent of four million is $240,000. Assume it is semi-evergreen, plus localization and digital revenue allows for another $120,000 per year for the next four years. That’s an average of $144,000 per year - a solid middle class income in Washington, DC and a pretty good income if you live somewhere with a lower cost of living.

The other scenario is to be prolific. Assume a new game makes you $15,000 in its release year (that would be 5000 units with a 6% royalty rate at ~$50 per copy) and makes $10,000 a year for the next four years including localizations and digital income. You would need to build up a pretty good size portfolio of games - maybe six or eight - before this becomes remotely possible as a full time profession. Releasing two games a year would be $30,000 for those new releases and say $60,000 to $80,000 per year from your back catalog. Of course, each game you release is a lottery ticket and could be the next Wingspan - or at least the next Root or Viticulture.

I do not really own a yacht in the Caribbean.