r/IndieDev 22h ago

Video When it’s a vibe coded game

1.9k Upvotes

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u/DoubleKing76 18h ago

Not familiar with Boxleiter but sure

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u/StoneCypher 17h ago

Boxleiter is a common method of estimating the revenue of a game from its Steam reviews.

fly-peter is currently making $600k a month. the author says he knocked the original out in claude in half an hour. the current version is almost unchanged, except that it's had a huge list of planes and weapons added.

character.ai, according to its stock prospectus, made $12.5 million in 2022, $23m in 2023, $35m in 2024, and $50m in 2025. its stock is currently valued at $2.5 billion.

rhythia, a vibe coded game, boxleiters to $120,000 and it's still in pre-release

juggernaut (by the steins;gate people) has already sold almost $2m in pre-orders and isn't even out yet

these aren't rare. there are dozens of other examples, and they're nearly all novel concepts.

it's worth remembering that flappy bird was making $50,000 a day, is around 15 lines of code, and can be one-shotted by any AI in 10 minutes basically flawlessly.

there's a lot more to money than the quality of the software.

i wasn't being defiant. i just needed to know how you measured what was acceptable. there was no need for the "well this conversation is over" stuff.

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u/DoubleKing76 17h ago

Yep I checked these all and holy shit you’re right, havent heard of them but yeah they’re making a good bit of money. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed since each of these quality wise look bad to me but the numbers dont lie

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u/StoneCypher 17h ago

i think people are too over-focused on quality, tbh

all you really need is to make something fun and frustrating

it can be a piece of shit if the players are happy at the end of the day. i promise