Second Wind - Q1 2025 Financial Report + Upcoming Plans
Hey folks!
It's that time again for another one of our quarterly reports. Financial breakdown is in the image above, and below we'll go into it in a bit more detail, as well as our upcoming plans for Second Wind.
Bit longer report than usual so enjoy the read!
/ REPORT BREAKDOWN
I'm very happy to report for Q1 2025 that we've made good on pretty much all of our goals we had for the start of the year.
We reduced our costs to account for the change of Patreon income from last year, we have had strong sponsor performance, we got the DFTBA store up and running, and Lost and Found has been going very well for us despite only starting up a couple months ago.
We completed our work on The Darkest Files, and we're about to wrap up work on The Horror at Highrook. We took on The Darkest Files pro bono to get our foot in the door and give ourselves a case study to work with, and The Horror at Highrook is our first paid client.
That game will be released on May 1st, and you'll see our work attached to that for launch.
We've been able to get our margin close to back to breaking even and with the work we have incoming for Lost and Found and sponsors for Q2, we should be back to being profitable.
However, we as a team decided to take pay cuts across our entire team for Q2 to make sure we're not straddling that line going forward. I do want to be clear that we took this step as a cautionary measure, and not because of any dire circumstances. The decision was made as a team due to the current economic climate and the volatility of both the games industry and our own Patreon exit reports.
We're expecting sponsors to be quieter for Q2 with all the current financial uncertainty in the US. We also saw a big uptick in people's exit surveys indicating job loss, reducing subscriptions to plan for potential financial hardship and so on.
Yahtzee and I took the biggest pay cuts as we promised we would at the start of Second Wind, and nobody from the team was let go with these pay cuts. Everybody is OK here.
Overall, everything is going in the right direction for us as evidenced in the report attached above and Patreon has stabilized for the most part which of course helps us plan ahead for the future.
/ UPCOMING PLANS + PATREON GOAL - $45,000 / month
For Q2 we're going to be very busy. I won't share all of our plans here as we'll have a fun channel update video to share in early May, but we've got a lot cooking.
To kick things off though we're giving ourselves the goal of getting our Patreon back up to $45,000 a month. This amount would essentially make sure we're covering our base costs every month between Patreon, YouTube ad revenue, and sponsorships.
The other money we pull in from merchandise, work for hire projects and anything else we do will help keep replenishing our war chest to keep us secure for the long haul.
We'll be making a big push on our Patreon for the next couple months including giving it a visual refresh, some additional promotion on our channel, and doing some event streams to drive interest.
We've been working on adding a lot of extra value to the Patreon over the last few months, including bringing ad-free videos down to the $5 tier.
Monthly Yahtzee Lore video (next up: Sonic)
Podcast interview series from Nick (Tonda Ros and Abubakar Salim out now, and more on the way)
Monthly experimental video from a different member of the team
NEW At the $10 tier we'll be adding in a new fun group video each month. First look at these in our upcoming channel update.
For the public we've been working on some new stuff as well quietly:
New pilot for a potential video series from Jess Hoops. First look coming in our channel update.
New pilot for a potential video series from Jenna Stoeber. First look coming in our channel update.
Pre-production on a new Adventure is Nigh one-shot campaign. First look coming in our channel update.
Regular video essays from Marty Sliva.
Recently launched Discovery Queue with good feedback so far.
For some general things we're planning for May and beyond:
Fun collaboration event streams with other independent games media outlets.
The return of Game Night streams + more focus on community events.
Taking a look at our weekly streaming schedule and refreshing some things + new ideas.
Our annual Second Wind fundraising stream event in June.
As always, we're super appreciative of all the support you've given us. We love making this stuff as much as you love watching it and hanging with us on streams.
I also want to give a personal shout out to the team for all the hard work they've put in this year already and working together to overcome some early challenges for the company. No other group I'd rather be working with every day of the week.
Thanks for reading this update and any feedback you have is welcome below.
Nick Calandra, Editor-in-Chief
Comments (31)
It really seems like the fallout from last year has slowed down, and there's a lot of forward momentum moving into Q2. I'm really looking forward to the collaborations and I hope my hunch is right that it will help grow the Patreon with outside help. And looking forward to my upcoming game night with my Red Dragon Inn Adventure is Nigh boardgame!
Another thought: you should also find a way to recognize long term Patreon subscribers in addition to higher tiers (both for their sakes and to encourage long-term membership (maybe a listing of all continuous donors of the previous year at each SW anniversary?)
Always feel really invested in you guys for some reason, but I like your story and it’s fun to actually directly pay for my most viewed and anticipated content instead of worrying about ads. I’d say $10k down at this point and in this economy is pretty stellar and I respect Nick and Yahtzee for taking the biggest hits. Hopefully you can get back into the black next time!
I've been Phoenix tier since Day 1 and can confidently say I don't plan on going anywhere. Y'all are phenomenal, thanks for the transparency, and I'm sorry about the pay cuts, though I understand it was for the good of the team. You all rock!
Loving the sound of all these new series. The interview stuff has been great so far nick. That last one felt a little bit like you two were having a small therapy session talking about your shared Twitter drama experiences lmao.
Nice to hear all this, especially about Nick and Yahtzee chipping in (along with everyone else) to stay afloat. You all have more than earned my $5 a month as long as I can afford it.
Will up my donation to the next tier. Appreciate seeing Nick and Yahtzee taking responsibility and reducing their take home to spare the effect on others at lower rates. Ship seems to have settled and the team beginning to play more to strengths than initially. Keep it up.
As always, the transparency is very much appreciated! Genuinely sorry to hear about the pay cuts; nobody wants to see that, but I understand why. I personally dropped down from Phoenix tier to standard tier recently for personal and financial reasons; not because I don’t still enjoy what second wind produces! I very much do. Glad to hear there are big things on the way, and wishing you all the best for the coming months!
I'm sorry to hear about the pay cuts, but it's probably the smart thing to do in the long run. But keep up the great work. Love most of the stuff you guys make and happy to be a $10 patron. This kind of transparency will keep me at that level for another year 😁
New pilots for potential video series and pre-production on an Adventure is Nigh! one-shot campaign? Cool!😀
Thanks for the update & the explanation for why work for hire was negative income in Q1. Not purely financial related, but any update on when Adventure is Nigh will be available on bluray?
Sorry, the marks around those are to indicate it’s an outstanding payment we haven’t invoiced for yet, not negative income :)
I'm happy you guys are doing well amidst pay cuts and everything else going on😊❤😄
I really hope you can make profit soon, I'll check my finances to see if I can go up to the 5$ subscription.
Keep up the good work. I am curious about the group videos your planning for $10 backers, may consider bumping my contribution up if it catches my attention. Sorry to hear the need for cuts but glad your guys are being pragmatic with it
I admit I only really signed on for Darren and Marty's columns, but you've already sold me on these dev conversations. It should make for a fascinating alternative for Dev Heads. (No issue with that show; it's just on at a time that isn't ideal for me. What I've heard of it sounds great.)
Yeah Darren and Marty’s columns are what sold me on the patreon as well. I love that the columns have been used as the basis for the video essays recently as well. More people deserve to read them and putting them into videos is a great way to do that without diluting the paywall.
Really appreciate these updates. It was an easy promo to make when things were going great at the start, but how you've kept with it during recent headwinds is a real testament to your integrity, and I believe is an investment in your fanbase that will ultimately pay real dividends.
More Jenna and Jess is awesome. I still say that a $100 tier would be very popular, and as soon as a higher level is available, I'll sign up for it. As far as working with other independent creators, I would love if SW worked with Lemon from the Backlogs. I know he's a huge Yahtzee fan, and Jack is a fan of him. Keep up the great work!
Will the channel update video be introducing Jenna as a permanent new member of SW? Just curious because of the soft announcement of a new series. Thanks for all you do! Been loving lots of the content lately 😊
We won't be adding anyone full-time anytime soon. But Jenna has been a regular on my The Editor's Hour stream every Tuesday for the last little bit!
Relieving to know y'all are doing okay.
I love the transparency. Keep up the great work ♥️
Thank you so much for the fantastic content. I'm greatly sorry to hear about the cuts, it's a very hard decision you all took, but I respect it. The most recent discoveries I've made to expand my tastes for video games, film and tv shows have come from recommendations from all of you. Your podcasts in particular make my days working from home much less lonely. I have started listening to them regularly, and continue to do so each work day. I realize too that I'm very lucky to still keep my job in such a volatile time. So you can count on me to continue with my membership as is reasonable.
The Horror at Highrook looks cool. I'm interested to know what part/s you guys have a hand in whether it be trailers or game art.
We're working on the launch trailer, a gameplay overview trailer, steam page updates, and some social media strategy!
To add some weight to your statement about job loss The company i work(ed) for, citibank, told us wednesday that my team was being let go. They offer a decent severance so I'll probably be fine but it's frustrating to be on the job hunt for the first time in 15 years. My team had 20 people on it, we're all gone. I know 5 other teams were clipped as well at our office. They always do this stuff in waves so there will be another 4 or 5 rounds of this, in the end i suspect my site wont have actual citi employees anymore, just contractors. So ya, trumps fucking of the economy is having real impact on people. I like how you guys formed, I'll keep my contribution going as long as i reasonably can. Thanks for what you do and the transparency you guys maintain.
Honestly your problem seems to be the same as it was while at the escapist - trying to capture too many audiences. Streamlining your content along the more high volume viewer bases would be advisable, especially for a company still basically in its infancy. I know I don't watch firelink, or read the movie stuff. Design delve, windbreaker, and yahtz is basically all I watch as that is what interests me and, from the look of it, most other members as well. Now I'm not saying the other content is not valuable, just maybe stretching out so far straight away like you guys did might not have been the best move, the frost stuff notwithstanding But I'm just a guy, tf do I know
Second Wind would not be possible without all the different people that contribute to it. There's something for everyone, and shows getting more views than other shows isn't how we decide what we make. We make what we want cause we want to.
For the Income breakdown, does "donations" cover things like super chats or are those rolled into the YouTube bucket?
That's all part of YouTube. Donations is just stuff from Ko-Fi or direct Paypal.