--- title: Can you make a living from making games? | daily.dev description: An indie game developer shares a personal account of making a living solely from selling games on Steam, without relying on YouTube income. Living in Portugal... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/can-you-make-a-living-from-making-games--x0f4lu0ni twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Can you make a living from making games? | daily.dev og:description: An indie game developer shares a personal account of making a living solely from selling games on Steam, without relying on YouTube income. Living in Portugal... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/can-you-make-a-living-from-making-games--x0f4lu0ni og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/x0F4lu0Ni.png og:image:alt: Can you make a living from making games? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Can you make a living from making games? **[Code Monkey](https://daily.dev/sources/codemonkeyunity)** · 1 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An indie game developer shares a personal account of making a living solely from selling games on Steam, without relying on YouTube income. Living in Portugal with a low cost of living (around €750/month), they explain that a single game could earn over seven thousand euros in a year, enough to sustain them for five to six years before starting their YouTube channel in 2018. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Can an indie developer actually make a living selling games on Steam without YouTube income? Yes, one developer sustained themselves for about five to six years purely from selling a self-made Steam game before starting a YouTube channel. Living in Portugal with monthly expenses around €750, they earned over seven thousand dollars from a single game built over roughly one year, which was enough to cover their low cost of living. _Developers weighing indie game development as a career path can find similar firsthand accounts on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Steam's Getting More Games But Earning Less, Analysts Report](https://daily.dev/posts/steam-s-getting-more-games-but-earning-less-analysts-report-p0p4tlcrn) · 80 LEVEL · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Indie games have built a thriving economy in territory traditional publishers abandoned or ignored \| Opinion](https://daily.dev/posts/indie-games-have-built-a-thriving-economy-in-territory-traditional-publishers-abandoned-or-ignored--iozue0no6) · GamesIndustry.biz · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#steam](https://daily.dev/tags/steam) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/can-you-make-a-living-from-making-games--x0f4lu0ni) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Can you make a living from making games?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/can-you-make-a-living-from-making-games--x0f4lu0ni","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/can-you-make-a-living-from-making-games--x0f4lu0ni"},"datePublished":"2026-08-16T12:19:32.225Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T20:58:27.005Z","description":"An indie game developer shares a personal account of making a living solely from selling games on Steam, without relying on YouTube income. 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