How did the Heartbound developer go viral [Marketing for Indie developers]
22This video shows you a theory how the Heartbound developer Piratesoftware went viral and what you as an indie developer can learn from it. Congrats to Piratesoftware having achieved what only a tiny handful of people can achieve. 1 million subs on Youtube.
This theory was made in a quick and dirty research from my side (glorious 15 minutes). But still it may be valuable for indie developers that want to emulate his success or copy something from him because his numbers are pretty good (social media, sales of Heartbound).
So from what I could gather on the internet, following things went pretty well for Priatesoftware.
1. His game was covered 6 years ago by a really big streamer/influencer (March 2024, 30mio subs) and the audience plus the streamer did give positive feedback towards the demo of his game Heartbound. I played it myself and can say it is well crafted. That is a really good start.
2. He got promoted 3-4 months ago by another big time influencer where his numbers shot up again with strong keywords. Between those his YouTube channel/twich dev stream was earing steadily subs (and views) but not as exponentially as with his 2nd "flappy bird" moment (the one you see right now). The conclusion is here that the grind (make your game, create marketing videos/streams/blog posts, important also) is being dwarfed by getting viral and surfing on the wave.
But hey, maybe I am missing something. Not all makes sense. Let me know.
Sources from the video:
https://gamemaker.io/de/blog/pirate-software-from-infosec-and-blizzard-entertainment-to-streaming-gamedev
https://steamspy.com/app/567380
https://socialblade.com/youtube/c/pirate_software
https://store.steampowered.com/app/567380/Heartbound/
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Other Statistics
Heartbound Statistics For 1up Indie
There are 542 views in 1 video for Heartbound. Less than an hour worth of Heartbound videos were uploaded to his channel, making up less than 0.14% of the total overall content on 1up Indie's YouTube channel.