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How a top grossing game with a community of 5 million players failed and brought a company down

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How a top grossing game with a community of 5 million players failed and brought a company down
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| HonorBound

It's not easy to find a profitable market. It's even harder on mobile games where the top grossing apps seem to be set in stone for the past few years with little to no changes in the top ten.

That's a hard lesson that JuiceBoxGames, the studio behind Honorbound learned. In an open and honest post mortem, the co-founder and CEO of JuiceBoxGames reflects on what went right and wrong with the company.

Honorbound was not an unsuccessful game. In fact, it was top grossing in the RPG/Card game category for a little while and made over a million per year. In total, players spent eight million on it. JuiceBoxGames even got to the market in 2012 but, according to him, it was already too late.

Sadly, even these kinds of numbers weren't enough to sustain the company and their second game didn't do well.

JuiceBoxGames couldn't transfer the community of their first game into Stormborn, with the second app getting less than 10% of Honorbound's download numbers.

He also expands on how feedback from investors can be contradictory, leaving everyone confused as to how to proceed.

Ultimately, JuiceBoxGames couldn't keep making games and had to close.

I'd encourage you to give the full thing a read, especially if you want to start a career as a developer or get in on the business as it's a real eye opener. Sadly though, it's also more common these days.