Steam's fourth most popular game at the moment isn't really a game at all - it's Bongo Cat, an adorably chubby feline who sits at the bottom of your desktop and counts every time you press a key. The higher the points, the more hats you can unlock for dear ol' Bongo Cat. But despite being 'played' by well over 100,000 people every single day, it's actually losing money, apparently.
Bongo Cat currently has 160,000 cat sitters, more than absolute heavy hitters like GTA 5 and Apex Legends, but Irox Games CEO Marcel Zurawka told Eurogamer that the app is "not even paying a developer for us... If you just look at the numbers, it's actually losing us money in the end."
Bongo Cat is a free-to-play game that only makes money from inexpensive microtransactions that let people lay down a couple quid for cosmetics, which is nice. Thing is, according to Zurawka, Bongo Cat's only drummed up $12,650 in its first three and a half months of release - definitely not enough money to cover one developer's yearly salary.
Though Zurawka doesn't actually care whether or not Bongo Cat itself makes tons of money. It was made in a couple of weeks and, more importantly, it exists more as an "insane marketing tool" for the devs' next game: Oku, a watercolor adventure with the aesthetics of Okami but the flowy movement of Flower.
Essentially, Bongo Cat's virality was supposed to push the team's next big, proper project into the spotlight, and it's sort of working. If you follow and wishlist Oku, you'll get a free hat in Bongo Cat.
"It's an insane marketing tool," Zurawka continued. "We are now converting people to the next game from us."
The stunt drove 50,000 wishlists and follows for Oku, which puts the upcoming indie game at around 750 on Steam's Most Wishlisted chart. Great for Irox Games, but it probably paints a bleak picture for the dozens of hopefuls looking to breakout on the storefront every singe day.
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