Mehmet Çakan, CEO of Teneke Kafalar Studios, shared an article on LinkedIn and announced that the studio’s hit game Feign has generated over $1 million in less than two years. Çakan explained the marketing decisions behind the success and why they decided to stick with a single platform, one game, and one sales channel.
For those who are not familiar with the game, Feign is a role-playing game with a maximum of 12 players that takes place in a small town where innocents, imposters, and neutrals come together. As Çakan stated, the game generated over $1 million in revenue from Steam. As of writing this article, there are 139 people playing the game, according to Steamdb. Feign has a 90% rating on Steam with over 2,500 reviews in “Very Positive” status.
“One of the proudest aspects of this situation is that we have achieved this success with a very small team, each of whom is very valuable, but very small in number of people,” says Mehmet Çakan. “The second important title is that we have done a very good job of managing our distribution strategy. In fact, we can list many titles. For example, the fact that we did not accelerate sales with paid advertising when the game was not ready for advertising is just one of the very good examples of this issue.“
Advertising a game on Steam before it’s truly ready can have detrimental consequences. It risks tarnishing the developer’s reputation by presenting an unfinished or unpolished product to potential players, eroding trust and credibility. Furthermore, the marketing budget allocated for such campaigns may go to waste, as the game may not be in a state to effectively convert interest into actual sales, resulting in a poor return on investment. Negative reviews and feedback can further compound the issue as players feel deceived, leading to lasting damage to the game’s reputation.
Mehmet Çakan also talked about sales in different regions, saying, “If you were to ask me to name the one title that you consider the most important, I would say without hesitation, the distribution of our games around the world. As of now, 86% of the $1 million in sales I mentioned above have come from outside of Turkiye (our home country), and that number is still growing.”
Feign’s success comes from aiming at the global audience, not just the Turkish market. Even though it is a big market, it has a rather low ceiling when it comes to PC gaming. Çakan says, “It is obvious that it is very difficult for PC game companies targeting only the Turkish market to survive, let alone grow. Taking the Turkish players and their positive feedback as an opportunity to improve your game, establishing partnerships with the right teams operating in the current sector, and making your game a production that attracts attention in the whole world market is a very correct strategy in the coming period.”
Catering the game to the global audience and having feedback from local players seem to work out for Teneke Kafalar Studios and Feign. You can read Mehmet Çakan’s article on his LinkedIn page.
