The 5 'Tiers' of TTRPG Publishing

Cannibal Halfling Gaming published an interesting article recently in which they divided tabletop roleplaying game publishers into five tiers, based on annual revenue. Here were their categories, but you should check out the article for a deeper dive.

~$500 million annual: D&D
~$50 million annual: Paizo
~$5 million annual: Steve Jackson Games
~$500K annual: Evil Hat Productions
~Everyone else (up to $100K)

They chose one example publisher per tier; they didn't list every TTRPG publisher. That's why your favourite publisher is not on that list of 4 companies. But feel free to add to the list!

Also, we talked about it in last week's episode of Morrus' Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk, for those who prefer to absorb their news in video format!

 

[Dyson Logos]

Perhaps your sales volume isn't up there with the big boys, but . . . your work is amazing and appreciated! Hopefully you're pulling in enough to keep the lights on! (and afford health insurance and retirement savings . . .)

One of the reasons I can have this one-man-shop is I live in a country with socialized medicine. Retirement savings... well... until a few years ago my retirement plan was to die in the climate wars.

 

[Gradine]

Retirement savings... well... until a few years ago my retirement plan was to die in the climate wars.

What........ what about that changed?

 

[dragoner]

I'm good with dying in the climate wars. I rank at the floor of everyone else.

 

[Bagpuss]

Very interesting. I'd be very curious where PEG, Chaosium, and Onyx Path land. Somewhere around or below Evil Hat, I'd bet.

Think you are underating most of them, or over estimating Evil Hat

Chaosium, annual sales of $13.6M put them between Steve Jackson and Pazio which seems about right.

PEG is about $5 mil so Steve Jackson Games territory.

Onyx Path is in the Evil Hat range with less than $1 mil.

Modiphus is in the $12 mil range like Chaosium. When you look at a comparison of products released that's really surprising how much turnover Chaosium is getting from so few products.

Free League is under $5 between Evil Hat, and Steve Jackson. Nearer Evil Hat from what I've seen, which seems odd considering the licenses they have grabbed.

 

[Dire Bare]

What........ what about that changed?

Dying in the climate wars before retirement?

 

[bedir than]

I do have some questions about the accuracy of the Canibal Halfling article, they already mention that D&D isn't actually $500 million revenue annually. I also see $2B for WotC while the end year report says WotC did $1.7B, but there's also a digital division separate from WotC...

D&D seems to be around ~300 million per Scipio in the Alphastream Discord (there's algebra involved).

Similar to WotC, GW and Asmodee have much bigger revenue in things that aren't RPGs

 

[Morrus]

D&D seems to be around ~300 million per Scipio in the Alphastream Discord (there's algebra involved).

These are approximate bands, not exact figures.

Similar to WotC, GW and Asmodee have much bigger revenue in things that aren't RPGs

GW outsources its Warhammer RPGs to Cubicle 7. I don’t know what C7’s revenue looks like.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hey, I'm in the "everyone else" category! Woo hoo!

 

[Nord Ronnoc]

Goddamn, that's a huge gap between WOTC and Paizo!

 

[darjr]

These are approximate bands, not exact figures.

GW outsources its Warhammer RPGs to Cubicle 7. I don’t know what C7’s revenue looks like.

Scipios comment was about a number in the text, he clarified with.

no, in the text when he was first calculating the D&D revenue he ignored all the licensing revenue

If we are talking about the same comment from them.