It’s the first Tuesday of the month and that means it time for Unreal Christmas in October. Every month Epic Games gives away several assets for Unreal Engine developer and this month we got more than double the normal amount of new assets!

This months “Free for October” assets include:

The “Permanently Free” collection grew a fair bit as well:

Just be sure to “buy” the free assets before the first Tuesday in November and they are yours forever. You can learn more about this months giveaway in the video below.

Mario Kart Tour‘s 1st Anniversary Tour is fast approaching, and it’s set to reintroduce a handful of popular city courses. You can also expect to earn some handy rewards during this limited-time celebration, including additional rubies and more. The current Los Angeles Tour will soon draw to a close, meaning time is of the essence if you want to grab its themed rewards.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year since Nintendo’s kart racer arrived on the scene. The game has changed drastically over those 12 months, with its regular content drops helping to flesh out the core experience. Nintendo has also offered new ways to play, such as a fan-requested landscape mode, improved driving controls, and an extensive multiplayer component.

The 1st Anniversary Tour is slated to launch next Tuesday, October 6^th. The main draw will no doubt be the five returning city courses, but you can also net yourself some decent log-in goodies by playing the game throughout the 14-day event. And, as a bonus, every reward you earn will also get you some extra rubies. Not bad at all.

Here’s a trailer for the Los Angeles Tour:

If you’re an avid MK Tour player, you’ll no doubt find our Mario Kart Tour challenges guide to be of great use. And you can grab the game itself from over on the App Store and Google Play as a free-to-play title.

Developer Purple Tree Studio and publisher Zordix have revealed that Ponpu, an upcoming battle game, will launch on Nintendo Switch on 5th November. A new trailer has been released to celebrate, which you can watch above.

This “duck-on-duck destruction game” is inspired by Bomberman and features both a single-player campaign mode and plenty of multiplayer action. In the campaign, you can expect to battle your way through 10 worlds, all while fighting off rival Ponpu and enormous bosses.

When you want a change of pace, you can play against others in either local or online multiplayer. There are three modes to choose from here: Coin Chase (where you’ll need to grab coins before your opponents); Color Fight (a Splatoon-like mode where you need to cover the most ground with your colour); and Deathmatch, which is pretty self-explantory.

The all-seeing Duck God has had enough and the world has run out of time. Every 2 billion years the world must be refreshed through divine destruction and he has sent you, a Ponpu, as his herald. But, a nasty bump on the head during a crash landing took your memory and now you find yourself working against the Duck God in a carnage-fueled battle against other Ponpu to save the very world you were sent to destroy.

We’re quite liking the art style on display here and the gameplay does sound like it has a lot of potential. Perhaps this is one to keep an eye on?

Let us know what you think of Ponpu in the comments – will you be adding this one to your Switch wishlist?

© UNTIES

Developer Production Exabilities and publisher UNTIES have confirmed that the action shooter Wing Of Darkness will be coming to the Switch worldwide in February next year.

You assume the role of a female pilot – known in the game as a “Fraulein” – as they battle hostile forces called “Blankers” in a special HELT-System mech suit.

While much of the game takes place in the skies as you deal with the encroaching hordes, there are cut-scenes in which the tale of the two protagonists – Klara (voiced by Kiyono Yasuno) and Erika (voiced by Chihira Mochida) – play out.

Despite an initial dislike for one another, these two pilots eventually come together to fight the Blankers and solve the mystery surrounding the “Fraulein” military program, which all sounds like jolly good fun to us.

Wing Of Darkness hits Switch, PlayStation 4 and Steam on February 25, 2021. The digital version is expected to cost $29.99, while a limited edition physical copy will cost $84.99.

This physical package includes:

…the full opening and ending songs sung by the two lead voice actresses, an original soundtrack containing voiced stories depicting the daily lives of the two protagonists, as well as a visual fan book with many models of the two main characters and enemy aircraft. It also includes patches and pins bearing the in-game squad emblem, as well as a variety of other bonus items only available in this version. The visual fan book also includes a lyric sheet and an original voice drama, all of which will be fully localized into traditional Chinese and Korean.

What’s the hourly rate of a freelance developer? If you’re like me, you want to peek into the potential of a given profession before you commit years of your life to any profession like freelance developing.

The average freelance developer worldwide earns $56 per hour with conservative estimates ranging as low as $31 and aggressive estimates ranging as high as $82.

The following table compares the hourly rates of employed developers and freelance developers in different regions:

About the Data. Our data is based on various online sources such as indeed.com, neuvoo.co.uk, and other portals where professionals can report their earnings. We state the sources below in the image captions.

We modified the expected earnings of a freelancer by increasing the average earnings of an employed professional by 10%. This is based on the findings of this study: the average freelancer earns about 10% more than his employed counterpart. We found that in practice, the difference is often much higher than that—freelancers earning much more than employees. One of the reasons may be that freelancers have more control of their earnings—an ambitious freelancer tends to earn a higher percentage more than an ambitious employee in the same profession. This is because there are no caps in freelance earnings.

If you want to earn your full-time income working in your part-time freelancing business, check out our course “Become a Python Freelance Developer”.

Freelance Developer Hourly Rate US

The average hourly rate of an employed web developer is $31.62 per hour in the US. The average hourly rate of a freelance web developer is $34.78 in the US.

The average hourly rate of an employed Python developer is $56.90 per hour in the US. The average hourly rate of a freelance Python developer is $62.59 in the US.

The average hourly rate of an employed PHP developer is $46.28 per hour in the US. The average hourly rate of a freelance PHP developer is $50.90 in the US.

The average hourly rate of an employed .Net developer is $55.06 per hour in the US. The average hourly rate of a freelance .Net developer is $60.56 in the US.

The hourly rates in Canada are similar to the hourly rates in the US.

Freelance Developer Hourly Rate UK

The average hourly rate of an employed web developer is £19.29 per hour in the UK. The average hourly rate of a freelance web developer working remotely is £24.35 in the UK.

The average hourly rate of an employed Python developer is £29.79 per hour in the UK. The average hourly rate of a freelance Python developer working remotely is £48.21 in the UK.

The average hourly rate of an employed PHP developer is £20.51 per hour in the UK. The average hourly rate of a freelance PHP developer working remotely is £39.12 in the UK.

The average hourly rate of an employed .Net developer is £19.29 per hour in the UK. The average hourly rate of a freelance .Net developer working remotely is £46.68 in the UK.

For a freelance developer working in the UK, it’s usually the most profitable strategy to work remotely in the US and earn higher US salaries in the UK.

Freelance Developer Hourly Rate Germany

The hourly rate of a freelance developer in Germany is between 41€ and 83€ per hour. This is an average range that is valid for freelance web developers, Python developers, .Net developers, and PHP developers.

Freelance Developer Hourly Rate India

The hourly rate of a freelance developer in India is between $15 and $50 an hour on average. This depends on the particular skill sets—if you’re skilled in a specialized niche and have worked for more than 2-4 years as a freelance developer, you can usually land higher-paid gigs in the US and reach average freelance developer rates of $61-81 per hour.

Where to Go From Here?

Enough theory, let’s get some practice!

To become successful in coding, you need to get out there and solve real problems for real people. That’s how you can become a six-figure earner easily. And that’s how you polish the skills you really need in practice. After all, what’s the use of learning theory that nobody ever needs?

Practice projects is how you sharpen your saw in coding!

Do you want to become a code master by focusing on practical code projects that actually earn you money and solve problems for people?

Then become a Python freelance developer! It’s the best way of approaching the task of improving your Python skills—even if you are a complete beginner.

Join my free webinar “How to Build Your High-Income Skill Python” and watch how I grew my coding business online and how you can, too—from the comfort of your own home.

Join the free webinar now!

The post Freelance Developer Hourly Rate By Regions and Professions first appeared on Finxter.

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[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter, which you can subscribe to now for free, is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

Welcome to the final GameDiscoverCo piece for the week – this one covering various discount strategies for console and PC games, as well as what can only be called a ‘gigantic chonk’ of miscellaneous game discovery news.

Incidentally, I keep forgetting to mention that GameDiscoverCo has a Twitter feed now, if you want to check out neat game discoverability news on social media, in real-time. (As opposed to waiting for much of it to be bundled into these pieces!) Anyhow, let’s go go to the content content:

Experiments in Nintendo Switch discounting?

You may have seen a looong Twitter thread from my No More Robots compadre Mike Rose last week, talking – in non-NDA-breaking ways – about the various Switch game launches that NMR has done over the past few months (Yes, Your Grace, Hypnospace Outlaw, Not Tonight, Nowhere Prophet).

The main takeaway I had from the thread was that unfortunately, much larger discounts are still a way to brute-force Switch sales. This is due to the eShop charts being unit-based, and possibly people having residual Nintendo Gold Points to spend. (I’ve mentioned this a couple of times in this newsletter.)

But I was heartened to see something else. If your game is good quality and stands out, you can actually do pretty decently at lower discounts. You’ll just miss the ‘you reached the top charts’ effect. Look at Mike’s plotting of overall gross revenue for Not Tonight (90% off sale) and Yes, Your Grace (40% off sale):

You can see that both titles are initially hitting somewhere towards 6-10x normal revenue in the sale, initially because Reddit and various deal sites will swiftly boost interesting Switch game deals when they announce. (There’s not really a email/notification effect like Steam for Switch.)

But honestly, I was surprised that Yes, Your Grace had such good revenue ‘staying power’ at 40% off in this increasingly crowded market. It implies that this discount is something you can repeat. And compared to other platforms, it’s a slightly, but not stupidly aggressive discount. (It’s a relatively recent and high rated game, though.)

Yet brute-force wise, the 90% off game (Not Tonight) is getting additional juice from its presence near the top of the Deals and Charts section in certain regions. And Mike does also note that a previous 30% sale for Not Tonight didn’t have much of an effect. So does that imply there’s a class/vintage of game that can only get extra sales on Switch at >50% off. Which… is the thing that encourages this behavior.

Concluding, it does seem like Nintendo is thinking about this trend – and we may even be seeing limited changes soon* as a result of these overly discount-centric trends. (*I couldn’t possibly say.)

But I still think that a move to a revenue-based top chart, as Steam already does (look, I re-confirmed it with Valve’s Alden Kroll, it’s true!) would be another step in the right direction, in terms of incentivizing the best dev behavior for longer-term ecosystem preservation.

(Although it does come with the danger that the non-digital eShop charts would become ‘all Nintendo, all the time’ due to most first-party games’ $59.99 price point. So it’s not a slam dunk. Anyhow, onward and upward.)

What boost does a themed Steam sale give you?

Now, on to Steam discount/sale strategy! In this ‘vanilla, but still useful’ micro-case study, Gary Burchell from Fireblade Software, makers of ‘age of sail’ pirate sim Abandon Ship, passed along some abstracted data and comments from their recent appearance in the Valve-organized Steam Pirate Sale. (That’s peg leg and hook piracy, not ‘copying games’ piracy!)

Here’s some highlights from Gary: “The themed Pirate sale on Steam ran from 17th September 10am PT to 21st September 10am PT. It covered the weekend of 19th September, which was “International Talk Like A Pirate” day.” It was a ‘weekend deal’ highlight, so it appeared in the Special Offers section at the top of the Steam homepage.

Abandon Ship ended up getting in one of the higher tiers of the sale: “On the Steam client, 4 titles were given prominence at the top of the page: Black Flag, Sea of Thieves, Blackwake and Atlas. These have between 14,000 and 32,000 user reviews.. Underneath this in a three-row section was Abandon Ship. This section comprised a total of 7 games.” (The web version of Steam had a slightly different layout, with Abandon Ship rotating more freely in the top section.)

Due to the sale traffic, “a “Sales Page” option was displayed in the marketing section of the Steam back end. This accounted for nearly 3 million impressions & 37,532 store page visits at a click-thru rate of 1.27% (low compared to our lifetime stats).”

Gary also notes: “As with any general increase in Steam popularity, a temporary boost to Discovery Queue occurs.” And with the game picking a 30% discount – almost as high as their highest-ever 33% off – “sales during this period represented a 742% boost over an “average” week.”

He adds: “Approximately 50% of the sales during this period came from our Wishlists, the vast majority through the Wishlist email. [In addition], the Wishlist balance for this period represented an 847% increase.” That’s useful too.

So the conclusion? Keep watching out for eligibility for these Steam sales, especially those where you can be featured higher up on the page, or with less games. (Sometimes Valve will reach out, sometimes they’re organized by third parties.)

Other Stuff..

You know, there’s plenty of other fish in the sea. If by fish you mean ‘links’, and sea, you mean ‘the rest of this newsletter’:

• Lars Doucet just posted a Patreon update discussing his v0.3 update to his GameDataCrunch website, including a “find games similar to…” link on detail pages, with three methods: similar tags, similar audience, and a blend of both. I’ve already been joking about the gothic font-fest i found when looking at similar games to Yes, Your Grace. But seriously – some great data deep dives.

• Here’s the newest attempt to corral the massive amount of virtual and physical (& hybrid, I presume!) game dev events out there – GameConfGuide.com. And good luck to them – there’s a lot to keep up on.

• An odd Stadia-related note, via The Verge, here: “Google’s new $50 Chromecast with Google TV will support a lot of the streaming services most people would want… but the new Chromecast does have one very strange omission: Google’s own game streaming service, Stadia… Google says support will come sometime in the first half of 2021.”

• Steam’s Digital Tabletop Fest (Oct 21st-26th) got officially announced to the public, and it includes “virtual let’s plays, panels, talks and more streaming activities” organized by Auroch Digital at Valve’s request, with guests including Sandy Petersen, Steve Jackson, and Elizabeth Hargrave. (Steam’s still keen on ‘virtual fests’ that include both community content and game sales.)

• This Protocol story about Amazon Luna’s plans confirms my suspicions that Amazon’s VOD video channels is the conceptual model for Luna’s expansion: “”You’ll see other channels over time,” Amazon’s VP of Entertainment Devices and Services Marc Whitten told Protocol following the announcement.” Wonder which other major publishers will be hip to launch Luna ‘channels’?

• As a follow-up from my Wandersong column, the crew at review data/ranking site Steam250 pointed out to me that they have a full review history for each Steam game as part of their (currently free) Club 250 section. Handy if you want to know exactly how many reviews a game had on a particular day in the past.

• Didn’t have time to check out the many, many games featured in the #PitchYaGame Twitter showcase? GamersPack picked out some of their personal highlights, including Rain On Your Parade (pictured), where “you play as a jerk cloud. But…you do a heck of a lot more than to just rain on people’s parades (and weddings). You also dabble in arson, art-theft, and mass extinction.”

• Paradox’s Jacob Jorstedt posted a FutureGames marketing course lecture that I thought was neat – “Target audience research – Choose your tools wisely, from $0 bootstrapping to multi-million $ research investments.” It features “27 minutes of tools I wished I had access to back when I was starting out in the video games industry.” It preaches the gospel of data-based decision making – which I’m a fan of, duh.

• Microlinks: you can see the Steam Game Festival Autumn page-in-progress, including already-booked events, EA Play is coming to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on November 10th; you can now buy Epic Games Store games via the GOG Galaxy meta-storefront.

Finally, here’s an ‘amusing story’ about platform % cuts, which is possibly not that amusing in the end, but hey:

Know how everyone is up in arms over the 30% platform cut for Western game platforms? (And they are welcome to be!) Well, in China…: https://t.co/oCZBiieV78 pic.twitter.com/u7Mc9SQlZP

— Simon Carless (@simoncarless) September 28, 2020

[This newsletter is handcrafted by GameDiscoverCo, a new agency based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your premium PC or console game? We’ll be launching a ‘Plus’ paid newsletter tier with lots of extra info/data – watch out for it soon!]

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