I think that money mostly comes from corporate deals such as Sony paying them for PSVR2 support. They can’t be selling many copies of their game these days, I don’t recall seeing any microtransactions in No Man’s Sky, and as you said they don’t sell DLC so I don’t know where else they could be getting the money.

I have so many different ideas about making videos games like favourite games from my childhood But you will face ground up reality of game development
1. Choose right Game engine for learning and start game development, recent controversy related unity changed my mind about game engine, where unity charged money on every install by players,they delay the policy for next year, but unity is not right engine to start
some game engine used for learning basis like Godot but godot force you to use GDscript which is similar to python language which is not good, C++ and C# are recommend language for learn game development
2. you must know how to do art and music
3. you must have good budget and time to develop the game
4. the gameplay and story should be satisfied with gamers
5. Game should be fun and enjoyable not like clear the maps quest
6. your main object of making video games is earn money , if the game flopped or got pirated then you are screwed
7. Avoid any controversy with twitter mods, who will try to destroy your game but it gives attention on your games it’s free advertisement for your game like Hogwarts legacy and The Coffin of Andy and Leyley etc. They are successful because good controversy by twitter meltdown which boost game sells
8. avoid to get censorship by store page like steam and sony they are censoring indie games nowadays where they don’t censor first party or AAA games
9. you should not change your vision with character , just because your publisher has own bias, just for increase ESG scores which force make changes on your game , which is different from your creativity vision
10. NEVER trust your game publisher , if they wanna screw your game they will screw you really hard , because they will become ownership of your video games also owner ship of game name , source code and all the time you have put into this game
Game takes lots of time to develop if you wanna make good game like stardrew valley by yourself it would take 5 years to develop the game, it’s also depend on which country you are living if your country doesn’t value game develop as job you won’t get funded on your work, also try to avoid any game which has own level of drama like Yan simulator etc.

Yeah, mobile games are probably where the money is at, I just hate having to shake hands with the Devil to do The Lord’s work.

As for writing, that I can do. Or at least when I was a teenager people said I was good at it. I haven’t tried writing stories in a long time.

no mans sky makes tens of millions of dollars every year without selling any dlc, i dont like it, i agree but it is the truth.

dont, just make indie games from your home.

you are a dumbass frog and he is right.

correct how anyone can downvote this?

larian is woke and gay.

microsoft buying all those studios and them agreeing because they dont even have to worry about making money, ms will fund their crap forever.