What does a 50/50 revenue split mean in a game publishing deal?

It means that, once the publisher has recovered its costs, the revenue is shared half and half. The split only applies to Net Revenue, which is gross sales minus platform fees, taxes, refunds and any other deductions the contract lists. Before the split starts, the publisher recoups the advance, service costs and marketing.

What is recoupment in game publishing?

Recoupment is the publisher getting back what it spent on your game before any split revenue reaches you. That includes the advance, porting, QA, localisation, marketing and sometimes a markup on the advance. In the article's example, a 50,000 euro advance plus 75,000 euros of services and a 1.15x markup means roughly 132,500 euros has to be recovered first.

Is a 50/50 split good for a developer?

The percentage alone does not tell you. A 70/30 split in your favour can still mean years without a payment if the recoupment pool is large and Net Revenue strips out a lot. Get the full list of deductions in writing, run the waterfall for your worst-case sales, and only then look at the split.

Publishing Contracts

What '50/50' actually means

Topic Revenue Share

Level Foundational

Read time ~5 min

Published 20 May 2026

Updated 4 November 2026

By Michele Di Nardo, independent producer. 10 years across Raw Fury, Rebellion and 34BigThings.

The revenue split is the number everyone talks about in the pitch. It is also probably the least useful number in the whole contract.

The split percentage was almost never where the interesting conversations were. The interesting decisions were in the definition of Net Revenue.

In a full-service publishing deal, the publisher funds development. They handle porting, QA, localisation, and marketing. All of that costs money, and in most contracts, all of it comes back out of your revenue share before the split actually applies. That's recoupment. It's the structure most developers understand in principle and don't fully model before signing.

The math nobody runs

Say you sign a 50,000 euro advance. The publisher also spends 20,000 on a Switch port, 15,000 on localisation, 40,000 on marketing. Some contracts add a markup to the advance, 1.15x is not uncommon. Before any split revenue reaches you, the publisher needs to recover roughly 132,500 euro.

Then you subtract the platform cut (Steam takes 30%), taxes, and refunds. Your Net Revenue might be 0.60 euros for every 1.00 euro in gross sales before the recoupment pool is even touched.

A game that brings in 200,000 euro on Steam might clear that pool with 20,000 left over. Post-recoupment split on 20,000 at 50% is 10,000 euro to you. On 200,000 in gross sales.

None of this is hidden. It's in the contract. Most developers just don't run the numbers before signing. The Publishing Break-Even Calculator runs them for you, from net per unit to the copies it takes to recoup.

Ask the publisher to model recoupment using three sales scenarios: their projections, half of their projections, and a quarter. A publisher confident in their deal structure will do this without hesitating. Most do. The ones who don't, that's information too.

What actually matters

The questions to ask before agreeing to anything: what's in the recoupment pool? Is there a markup on the advance? Is marketing 100% recoverable, or does the publisher absorb some of the risk? Some deals have moved away from full marketing recoupment. It's worth asking about.

If you are still earlier in the process, before any deal is on the table, start with what a publisher actually reads in your pitch deck. The way your pitch frames risk shapes the deal terms you get offered later.

The split percentage is a secondary question. You can have a 70/30 in your favour and still wait years for your first payment if the recoupment pool is large enough and the net revenue calculation strips out enough before it gets to you.

The number to focus on first is the Net Revenue definition. Get the complete list of deductions in writing. Run the waterfall for your worst-case sales scenario. That result is your floor. The split percentage only matters once you know what it's applied to.

Deal milestone and schedule sanity checks are part of my Strategic Publishing Support service. More guides and tools live in the resources hub.