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Наталя ХандусенкоGameDev Eng
1 May 2025, 15:39
2025-05-01
A marketer started making mods for his kids' favorite games and now earns $25 000 a month. It all started with quitting his job for his sick daughter.
Six years ago, marketing executive Francisco Montaño quit his job when his eldest daughter fell ill. Last year, he started creating video game mods for his children, which unexpectedly started generating real income — sometimes a month’s earnings from mod sales exceeded his annual salary at his previous job. Apparently,The experience of a marketer came in handy.
Six years ago, marketing executive Francisco Montaño quit his job when his eldest daughter fell ill. Last year, he started creating video game mods for his children, which unexpectedly started generating real income — sometimes a month’s earnings from mod sales exceeded his annual salary at his previous job. Apparently,The experience of a marketer came in handy.
The first mods for my daughter's favorite game
When Francisco's oldest daughter was about 12 years old, she started having seizures. Doctors weren't sure what was causing them, and there was no way to predict when they might occur. So he quit his job in marketing, where he was making about $30,000-$40,000 a year at the time.
"Even when she got better, I continued to stay home with my children, who are now 20, 14, 11, and 3 years old," Francisco Montaño told Business Insider.
Francisco's children love video games, especially 11-year-old Sofia. So he decided to surprise his daughter by creating fashion for her favorite game. To do this, he started reading tutorials and watching YouTube while his youngest child was napping during the day.
First, Francisco made mods for their favorite game. When he saw that Sofia really liked them, he made them public.
“My marketing background came in handy. I put out free mods for a game we love to play, Ark: Survival Ascended. If people liked them and interacted with them a lot, I expanded on them. Eventually, that led to premium mods that people paid for,” Francisco said.
Now it's a business that brings in tens of thousands of dollars a month.
Francisco's mods have been downloaded about 37 million times on CurseForge. He earns between $15,000 and $17,000 per month. When he releases a new mod, he can earn about $10,000 in additional revenue within the first month.
"It's just incredible that in a few months I earn almost as much as I earned in a whole year working a traditional job. I usually spend two to three hours creating mods every night, usually after the kids have gone to bed. I don't work on the weekends because that's family time," the man noted.
When Francisco first started making serious money, he bought his wife a new car.
"Otherwise, I'm very responsible about saving. Most of the money is in a high-yield savings account. I want to develop this as a business, so I also contract with professionals, including a film crew and designers."
