tl;dr devs make money hand over fist on this game so stop defending them for spending seven years in alpha and hold them accountable

Per "The Fun Pimps," 7DTD sold over 11 million copies. The game sells on PC for $24.99 and on console for $29.99. Console outsold PC. To overcompensate for sales, let's drop that to $7 per copy and pretend the game sold only 11 million copies exactly.

Steam takes 30% of every sale and physical stores and digital retailers do too according to a 2019 report by IGN, so we'll reduce that accordingly to $53,900,000 over 7 years.

Federal income tax in the US for corporations used to be 35% at the top bracket. That dropped in 2018 but we'll be generous. Texas has no state corporate income tax. Ignoring any possible deductions to maximize tax payment, that leaves $35,035,000 over 7 years.

The company said they had 25 team members on their web page from 2017. They started with only three. The average software developer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, makes $106,000 a year. The median is lower. Software developer is the highest paid job in its category. We will assume every member of their team is an average-earning software developer working full time from day one, even though we know that isn't true. That's $18,550,000 in wages over 7 years, so let's chop that out too., leaving $16,485,000 in profit over 7 years.

There was also a $506,000+ Kickstarter. Being generous, let's say Kickstarter takes 10% and round down. That's $450,000. But hey, that's chump change, so let's say that entire cash influx went into the pledge rewards and not even count it.

So, ultra-conservatively, TFP makes net $2 mil in profit a year (rounded down) as a company, calculated by maximizing every cost while slashing the value of every sale by 72%. Realistically they probably more than double that.

Tell me more about how this "small company" needs more money and time to finish their project and how patient players should be and how after seven years it's unreasonable to expect the game to even enter beta.

I rewrote this review because the more I thought about it, the more I felt like everyone should play this game for the story. This is probably a hot take, but I also think the sound track is approaching DOOM-tier.

This game has the best cutscenes, the best characters, and the best voice acting. It's weird to recommend a shooter for the writing but there you have it. After the initial release reviews and scandal, I scoffed at Game of the Year nominations, but after playing it from a sale... warranted. Just not for the reasons you'd expect.

It's also a serviceable FPS RPG that manages to out-Deus Ex Deus Ex. That said, the're some E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy in here too- this is a goofy, buggy game, and if you forget the game will crash and cost you hours of playtime to remind you. I spent 70 hours to complete the story and most of the side missions, although probably closer to 80 with reloads from crashes.

Original review:

"The Game Is Fixed" in 2023 is about as accurate as "Mission Accomplished" was in 2003.