How much does an AVN cost?
This is a post I wanted to publish months ago, but unfortunately couldn’t because, for legal reasons, I had to wait for a response to my tax return for 2025. Last year, I was forced to turn my hobby into a small business, and before publishing any figures, I wanted to make sure for myself that they had been verified as correct by my local tax office.
So, for everyone who wants to know how much an AVN costs - at least my AVN - here are a few figures for you.
A quick note up front so you can put this into context:
tl;dr:
I could spend less and earn more, but I don’t feel like it because that would take the fun out of it and would slow down the progress.
Longer version:
Although I’ve had to turn game development into a small business, it remains a hobby for me. I do have a certain obligation to generate revenue, but maximizing profits isn’t a requirement and will never be a goal of mine. As long as the development costs are covered until completion, that won’t change. As some of you may have noticed, my subscription tiers and prices have hardly changed since the beginning of development in October 2024, and I also do not offer any additional services such as special renders, voting power, etc. For me, my personal enjoyment is the top priority, and under no circumstances do I want any outside influences in my office in the evenings to interfere with that. At the end of the day, I sit alone at my desk in the evenings, working on the game, and I don’t want any type of money to make me feel obligated to change how I spend my free time. Therefore, from start to finish, my sole focus will be on completing the game. Everything else is, fortunately so far, a positive bonus.
I started this whole project in September 2024 with no prior experience, an empty product database, and no idea how much effort or money the whole thing would cost. This led, especially in the beginning, to me buying many things that I’ll either use far in the future or, in some cases, not at all. This also led me to the uninformed decision to go with the newer G9 models from Daz rather than the tried-and-true G8/8.1. For those who, like me at the time I started, are unaware, this has implications for the required hardware, since G9 models consume significantly more resources, and for the selection of assets such as clothing, third party 18+ assets, etc., which naturally aren’t as extensive as with older models due to their shorter lifespan.
Here’s a rough breakdown of the figures by year:
2024
Revenue: 150 euro
Expenses:
Hardware: 1625 euro
Digital Assets, music, software licenses, Patreon/Payment provider fees, energy, etc.: 2217 euro
Taxes: 0 euro
2025
Revenue: 7989,61 euro
Expenses:
Hardware: 5135,97 euro
Digital Assets, music, software licenses, Patreon/Payment provider fees, energy, etc.: 4701,50 euro
Taxes: 649,04 euro
2026 (so far)
Revenue: 5957,78 euro
Expenses:
Hardware: 0 euro
Digital Assets, music, software licenses, Patreon/Payment provider fees, energy, etc.: 2613,72 euro
Taxes: 157,89 euro
Overall, I’m currently still slightly over 3000 euros in the red. With the release of Chapter 6 at the latest, I should reach the break-even point, at which I should turn a profit for the first time after nearly two years.
For those who don’t want to look at the numbers, here’s a summary:
Especially at the start of development, if you’re trying - like I am - to achieve high quality and a corresponding rendering speed, the hardware costs are very high. Also, don’t underestimate the cost of acquiring licenses for the graphical assets if you haven’t done any development work beforehand. If this were my second game, these costs would naturally be lower, since common assets like poses, facial expressions, and even some clothing, etc., can be reused.
The first months in which revenue exceeded my expenses occurred one month before the release of Chapter 3, in July 2025. So it took almost a year before I no longer had to invest my own money on a monthly basis. As of April 2026, however, the entire game has still not turned a profit. This is meant to illustrate just how long it can sometimes take to be able to approach development with a more “relaxed” mindset in regards to spending.
I’d like to wrap this up with a few personal words.
Of course, due to the many platforms through which AVNs are distributed, I can’t be 100% certain of the accuracy of this estimate, but based on the numbers I’ve been able to collect , as well as the figures from my itch.io account, approximately 1,7% of the people who download the game ultimately decide to support the game’s development via Patreon/itch. This figure includes returning users. The bulk of it comes from Patreon.
I’m aware that this figure is influenced by my decision to release the game for free after a two week early release on Patreon, but I don’t think the difference would increase significantly in the long run until I have a finished game.
To these 1,7% of people I’d like to say the following. Without you working on the game wouldn’t be possible in the way I’m currently able to do it. Yes, the big money may come in later through stores like Steam/GOG/etc., but what good is that revenue later on if you don’t even make it that far in the first place because you can't finance it all by yourself?
I would also like to take this opportunity to highlight that many developers never reach the stage in the development process where their income covers all the costs. It takes a lot of hard work to develop, maintain and ultimately finish a game. This is especially true in terms of the time you have to put in, and most do it the same as me, while working full time. I have a lot of respect for every developer who puts themselves out there, often without receiving the appreciation that their time investment deserves. I hope that, like me, you can find all the motivation you need within yourself and in the enjoyment you get from working on your dream game.
For me personally, if I stay above 500 euros per month and rise to 1,000 euros in release months, then the game’s funding remains secure without me having to rush a Steam release or slow down development.
Comments (20)
Thanks for the peek behind the curtain. Your game is recommended by a lot of people and imagine my surprise when there was a free download link a couple months ago. 2% is crazy though. Anyway now that I've played it and love it, I will try to drop in some cash on release months for the future. Thanks for having a free tier where we can read updates and then know when the releases are coming. I'm sure a lot of people only pay for a month when there are updates, I know I do for several games. If I could afford to subscribe all year to every game I've ever tried, I would probably have enough money to make my own hah.
Hello! I'm late to this as I just started supporting you financially today. I really appreciate the transparency here, the peek into some of the true behind the scenes info we don't get from anyone else. I'm glad you're nearing the point where you should start to see a profit. Your game is absolutely worth it, one of the best that I've played and I'm happy to be able to support your endeavors. I understand that you have no wish for the game to be influenced by spending tiers. I will say that were you to provide a higher tier, even without any extra benefits to it, I would be happy to support you at that tier because I believe the work you do is worth it. That being said, I know you might feel pressured were their people investing more money into your product, so if you decide not to do that, I'm more than happy to continue to support you at the current level. Either way, thank you for the work you do and the experience you provide. Keep on keeping on!
Thank you for your support. On Patreon, you can make custom pledges, so in theory you can give however much you want. Not many people know about this feature. Just google it if you're interested.
Thanks for telling, i like the honestness…and your AVN is good, so please continue your gorgeous work ! 🫡🔥👌
Im currently running a state of the art rig, 5090 etc, and wanted to get into AVNs myself (since im disabled and stay home anyways) but dont know where to start... I dont want to do it for profit purposes but pure passion.
Start with watching YouTube tutorials for daz3d. That's how I started. You'll also have to learn Ren'py. As a bonus look into image editing and audio editing. With your 5090 you'll have to keep in mind that currently only the daz beta supports 50series cards. This prevents you from using certain utilities in daz itself.
Did u get a brand new pc setup or something 5k euros is insane
Search for A6000 pro, A6000 or 5090 GPU prices and you'll find out :D If you work with 3D models you need a lot of VRAM, and gpus are more expensive than cars by now.
I am curious, would you have any tips or insights for anyone wanting to start out or wanting to make their own VN? Is it just get started, or should someone look or for some thing? Besides that, thank you so muchf ro the insight, it's really interesting to read.
That depends entirely on your personal situation. How much time do you have? What are your financial resources? What skills do you bring to the table? If you have unlimited time and money, just go for it. Otherwise, you should at least research the software you’ll need to create the game. Find out how much the assets you want to use cost and where you can get them. Then try it out for a while to see if A: you can actually do this on your own, and B: if this is something you want to do every day for years to come. B: is the factor that determines whether you’ll finish the game. A: is something you can always improve with practice.
Thank you for sharing and I hope you are some day rewarded for your incredible work.
Thanks for the insights.
well Ive been supporting you for the last 8 months and i was already planning to keep doing so because i love the game but i hope and urge people to also support this game!
Thanks for sharing
I hope a lot of people on certain websites get to see this breakdown. I'm not against those site in itself, it's how I find games and devs to support, but it's often infected with people that have no clue how fucking expensive it is to get the hardware needed and of course the assets (let alone free time to work on the game). I started this week with DAZ myself, purely out of boredom and I will suck at it which is fine haha, but seeing how barebones the free stuff is when you start really shows how much money you need to invest to even get started rendering or working on a avn. With blogs like this, that just shows hard data, people might be more understanding of why updates sometimes take so long (especially not in your case, but just in general) and well, perhaps route out thy cynism that sometimes appears so much in regards to developers. Honestly, I wish I were able to support more devs, because so many more truly deserve it, but there's just a limit to what I can spend, which really is a bummer because others then miss out. And many people are in this situation, which might also explain the low % of people that eventually support a game/dev. You also hav the huge problem of the Big Few being like a black hole that sucks all supporters to them. Not blaming them of course, but I wish it were different. Also, yesterday when browsing the store I saw (adult) Madelyn's haircut (and model I think) haha. So recognizible and well, honestly I'm glad you ended up with Gen9. Sure it's a lot more expensive, but it DOES show in the quality of the renders, the diversity of characters compared to other games, makes the game also more futureproof (which might be a big pro when launching on Steam eventually, because it won't look dated any time soon). And with how fast you release updates (which is truly baffling, in a good way), the extra time it needs for these quality renders isn't an issue imo. So yeah, thanks for this amazing game that touches on mature themes, which sets it apart from many other games and thanks for also not blueballing us haha. And also thanks for your work ethic but again, don't ever feel guilty to take a step back or slow things down when it becomes too much. No one will blame you for taking time off, if and when you want it. Last thing we need is a burned out dev ;)
That's an interesting insight and a nice peek under the hood of how game development goes. Thank you for putting all that effort, time and money into this. You are making something really special here and we are glad to support in our own small way. Keep up the good work. 😎👍
This level of transparency combined with your incredible clockwork productiveness and informative weekly logs as well as extremely reasonably priced support tiers that's not hunting whales is why I am a proud supporter of your work. To see the number of supporters grow from <100 when I signed on a year ago to today's have been a heck of a journey. And it's well deserved!
Thanks JpK for this enlightening and honest assessment. I must say that amongst all the AVN creators I support you are one of the most efficient ones and one of the cheapest to support as you have no expensive (to my understanding) support tier. I at times really wonder how you can deliver such a quality that fast , congrats ! I am happy to see that you enjoy doing this, so thank you for the great work. I am planning to support you in the long run 🙂
Good for you, JPK. Priorities! I hope your game blows up even more so you can rake more profits. That would MAKE me happy 😋. I'm just happy to be here for the amazing, magnificent, magical ride on the journey 🌈🚄💨! Thank you for your hard work and dedication! Keep it up 😉! I'll be here with you forever 😁🙌🏻! Happy to be part of this family/community 🤗! I'm going to raise my Tier just to contribute more 😜!
Thank you, jPk, for the amazing game you’re making. I’m really glad to hear you’re on your way to the green, it’s totally deserved. I’m a release-month-only supporter, but I like to think it still makes a difference, if a little one.