A developer says his massive hit on Steam was just luck

The developer Luca Galente had enormous success with his indie game on Steam, but he is convinced that he had luck on his side.

Which game is it? Vampire Survivors is a popular indie game on Steam. The roguelite has a retro pixel art style and costs less than €5. Since its release, it has received over 243,000 positive reviews on Steam. With 98% positive feedback, it is one of the top 4 rated games on the platform (via SteamDB).

In Vampire Survivors, you must survive against countless monsters approaching from all directions. Your character performs various attacks independently. Your main task is to dodge the malevolent creatures and collect experience points.

With each level-up, the game presents you with a selection of weapons that you can use for defense – including garlic, an axe, or a bible. Additionally, there are permanent upgrades for your character in the menu, items with passive effects, and new unlockable characters with different weapons.

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Vampire Survivors: The indie hit on Steam is now available on the Epic Games Store

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Success came too quickly to be stolen

What does the developer say? Behind Vampire Survivors is indie developer Luca Galente. He stated in an interview that he was lucky with the success of his game (via GamesRadar).

“The first thing I noticed were the literal plagiarisms. People copied Vampire Survivors and published it in other stores,” Galente explains, adding, “There are companies whose only goal is to watch which games are successful […] and then very quickly create a clone.”

While Galente thinks it’s “great” to inspire developers to create their own works, he criticizes people who only want to make money from the latest trend. This approach “kills the small indie games,” he says, which leads to their failure.

Galente believes he simply got lucky as an indie developer in this situation. His game sold too quickly for similar games to steal its success: “I was lucky. My success was lightning-fast. Players noticed me before any vulture could observe the increase in sales.”