What revenue share does a game publisher take?

Developers compare offers by the split: 70/30, 60/40, 50/50. It is the number in the email and the one people quote on forums. But two offers with the same split can pay very differently, because of what the split is taken from and what comes out before it. The worked example below has one game, one advance and one 50/50 split, and the developer's first-year income ranges from $0 to $250,000 depending on a single clause.

So read three things together: the split, the definition of net revenue, and recoup. Then the term, the rights and the reporting.

Publishing contracts are private, and almost no data on them is public. The largest sample is Voyer Law's, a games law firm that analysed more than 100 agreements signed between 2017 and 2025, reported by GameDev Reports in May 2025:

The pattern matters more than any single figure. A marketing-only deal on a nearly finished game sits at the top of the range, around 70% to the developer. A deal that funds the whole game sits near even. That matches the earlier, smaller sample of 30 agreements GameDiscoverCo reported in August 2020: developers averaged 71% without an advance and 55% with one, and the average advance in deals that had one was $460,000.

Read the averages as a shape, not a price list. The 2.5% to 90% range in advance deals says how much a single negotiation can move the number, and a publisher funding a first-time team with no audience evidence prices that risk in.

Splits are usually of net revenue: what the store pays out after its own share, refunds, chargebacks and sales taxes. On Steam, Valve's share is 30% of a game's revenue up to $10 million, 25% from $10 million to $50 million, and 20% above, under the tiers Valve announced in November 2018. So on a typical indie game, a 70/30 split of net is about 49% of the gross to the developer, and a 50/50 split about 35%, before recoup.

Watch for contracts that deduct more before the split: the publisher's marketing spend, porting and localisation costs, QA, or an overhead charge. Voyer Law found a publisher mark-up in 3.2% of advance deals. Every line taken off the top shrinks both shares, but the developer usually feels it first.

An advance is not a gift. It is repaid, recouped, out of revenue, and Voyer Law found that 93.9% of advances were recouped from revenue share. The clause that matters is where the repayment comes from. Four common shapes:

• From the publisher's share. You earn your split from the first sale; the publisher recoups out of its own half. The most developer-friendly.
• From all revenue. Every dollar goes to recoup until the advance is repaid, then the split starts.
• From the developer's share. You earn nothing until your share alone has repaid the advance.
• A shared or tilted recoup. Both sides earn during recoup, on a split that favours the publisher until it is repaid. Square Enix Collective described its terms to GamesBeat in 2018 as 70% to the publisher until recoup, then 70% to the developer.

In Voyer Law's sample, 48.4% of advance deals were recouped before the developer received its first revenue-share payment.

A game receives a $300,000 advance, Voyer Law's median, which pays for its development. It earns $500,000 in net revenue in its first year. The headline split is 50/50, except in the tilted case, which uses the 70/30-then-30/70 shape above.

The advance is rarely the only thing recouped. Ask for a list of every recoupable cost, in writing:

• Marketing spend: ads, PR retainers, festival and event costs.
• Ports and certification for consoles.
• Localisation into each language.
• External QA and compatibility testing.
• Physical editions, merchandise and events, where the deal covers them.

Then ask for a cap. A recoupable marketing budget with no ceiling can keep a game unrecouped indefinitely, and with recoup from your share, that means you never see a payment.

• Term and renewal. Voyer Law found 85% of deals had a fixed term and 15% were perpetual, and 49.2% renewed automatically. A term that renews itself is a term that does not end.
• Territory and platforms. Where, and on which platforms, the publisher sells the game. Rights you do not grant are rights you can sell to someone else, such as a porting partner.
• Escalators. A split that improves for the developer after recoup or after a revenue threshold. The Collective's 30/70 after recoup is one.
• Reporting and audit. Quarterly or monthly statements of sales, costs and the recoup balance, and the right to audit them. 83.3% of advance deals in Voyer Law's sample had audit rights.
• IP and sequels. Developers kept their IP in 96.4% of advance deals, but 63.5% gave the publisher rights over a sequel, most often an exclusive right to make it or a right to negotiate first.
• Merchandise. Where a deal covers it, the developer's average merchandise share in advance deals was 48.3%.

This is general information, not legal advice; have a games lawyer read a contract before you sign.

1. Model both on the same revenue. Take a low, middle and high first-year net revenue for your game, from comparable games' review counts.
2. Apply each contract's recoup clause and recoupable costs, not just its split, and compute what you earn at each revenue level.
3. Add the advance if you need it to finish; subtract what you would spend on the same jobs if you self-published.
4. Compare the rights you keep: IP, sequels, term, territories, platforms.
5. Ask the publisher's other developers how reporting and payment worked in practice.

An offer with a lower split, recoup from the publisher's share and a capped marketing budget often pays more than a higher split with uncapped recoup from yours. Our guide to whether you need a publisher has the break-even test against self-publishing.

Flockbay takes no share of your sales and no rights to your game. It is a free AI game builder on the official Godot engine that also does several of a publisher's jobs from the same chat: it drafts the Steam page and exports it as a .zip you upload yourself, cuts trailers, devlogs and shorts from your real gameplay, drafts posts and posts to TikTok, drafts ads on your own ad accounts for you to launch, builds a website for the game, and runs playtests by link. The publishing tools are free in beta until 1 December 2026; after that they come with a monthly plan, never a revenue share. It does not fund games or port them to consoles.