Monument Valley made $14.4M in two years, even with most downloads being free

Monument Valley developer Ustwo pulled in nearly $14.4 million of revenue in its first two years of release, the studio announced today, continuing its efforts to be transparent about the game's performance.

Ustwo offered the financial figures and much more information about Monument Valley in a Medium article. The infographic within represents data collected until April 3, 2016, the two-year anniversary of the game's debut. Ustwo spent a total of $1.4 million to develop Monument Valley and its Forgotten Shores expansion, which means that the studio has now made more than 10 times its investment.

During Monument Valley's first two years on the market, Ustwo tallied 26.1 million downloads, over 21 million of which — 80 percent — were free. To be clear, that doesn't refer to pirated copies; the game has been available free on a variety of occasions, including on iOS for a week last December (8.17 million downloads) and on Android via Amazon Underground (over 636,000 downloads). In addition, Ustwo teamed up with publisher iDreamSky to launch Monument Valley in China last June; the free Chinese version has been downloaded 11.79 million times.

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The Chinese launch has pushed Monument Valley to an astounding new level of popularity. The game was downloaded 3.09 million times during its first year of release, which means that 88 percent of its downloads came during year two. But even if you discount the Chinese market, Monument Valley still racked up 11.22 million downloads in its second year — more than 3.6 times as many as in its first year.

As for paid versions of Monument Valley, sales from the iTunes App Store far outpace sales on other marketplaces. Purchases on iOS account for 73 percent of Ustwo's $14.4 million of revenue, while only 17 percent of that total revenue came from Google Play. That's a slightly more even breakdown than during the game's first nine months of release, when Google Play sales comprised less than 14 percent of revenue.

It's worth noting that Ustwo's revenue did drop in Monument Valley's second year, from $8.01 million to $6.36 million. But year two included the game's second highest-grossing day of all time: March 1, 2015. That happened to be two days after the debut of House of Cards' third season, during which President Frank Underwood played the game.

For more facts and figures, including the full infographic, check out Ustwo's Medium post. Monument Valley costs $3.99 on the App Store, Google Play and the Windows Store.