VMagicMirror: ¥10M on BOOTH While Giving Away Nearly Every Feature for Free

Software given away for free that nonetheless sells ¥10 million worth of copies. VMagicMirror is one of the rare cases where that actually happened. It is a Windows application that drives a VRM avatar from your keyboard and mouse and puts it on screen, used for VTuber streaming, as a desktop mascot, and for showing an avatar in web meetings or on Discord. Developer Bakusutaa (獏星) released it on March 13, 2019, and in April 2023 wrote on note that cumulative BOOTH sales had crossed ¥10 million.

The surprising part is not the number but how it was earned. The free Standard Edition costs ¥0 and includes essentially every feature, important ones included. The developer goes out of his way to state that it is “not a trial version.” The source code is published on GitHub, with no obfuscation and no copy protection. And still the paid Full Edition kept selling, reaching eight figures in four years.

He calls this “a donationware-style release,” writing that “it would be completely unsurprising if not a single yen came in, but in practice a lot of people buy the paid edition.” The paid edition was added later, once he reconsidered and decided that “as something closer to a donation, this is fine.” For roughly the first two years, the app shipped only as a free download.

Numbers and timeline

The current BOOTH listing shows the free edition at ¥0, the Full Edition at ¥3,000, and a ¥100 “boost” tier for anyone who wants to pay more. What remains restricted in the free edition is narrow: webcam hand tracking and some effects around VMC Protocol transmission. The paid edition works less like a key that unlocks locked features and more like a counter where long-time users can pay.

Not taking features hostage

Conventional freemium deliberately leaves friction in the free tier and charges to remove it. VMagicMirror does not use that structure. The reason the developer gives for avoiding feature restrictions is simply that they are inconvenient. He also leads with a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, because users should not have to worry about forgetting to cancel.

The path from that design to actual revenue runs through trust, not features. Under “things I keep in mind so people feel like supporting me,” he lists four: keep maintaining the code, ship updates regularly, keep the app usable for anyone who reads English, and do not project desperation. The first three make it predictable that the software will still be running next year. The last one turns payment into support rather than pity — pleading hardship may work once, but it does not compound.

Choosing BOOTH over the Microsoft Store or Steam sits on the same line. The practical reasons were a low barrier to getting started and low fees, but the effect was to land inside BOOTH’s culture of “download it free, and buy the paid version if you like it.” The market and payment rails are the same ones used by the creator selling VRChat 3D assets to roughly ¥10 million a year and by the designer who published six months of BOOTH sales totaling ¥1.08 million. The difference is that they sell things you cannot get without paying, while VMagicMirror sells something you can.

The list of things not done

The 2022 list of “things I have not done” doubles as a description of an inverted strategy. Almost no competitive research. No advertising. No servers. No numerical analysis, analytics were never installed, so DAU is unmeasured. No ASO. No churning out new apps. No expansion to other operating systems. No hidden source code. No distribution through app stores. And, the one he calls the biggest difference: he never quit his job.

Outsourcing was limited to the logo. He never even opened a promotional social account, because running multiple accounts sounded tedious. He runs no user community and instead answers requests that arrive by DM; conversations with users who file unusually well-specified feature requests are what start development.

So this is not a victory of distribution tactics. Growth came from one thing, keeping a hard-to-substitute piece of software in a market whose user base was expanding, and the total volume of tactics is, if anything, extremely low. If SiRO’s fourteen-year record of indie development is the type that grows by switching what it builds, this is the type that bet on one product for six years.

The weak points

Because the free edition is the main product, this business has no measured demand. With no analytics, neither user count nor DAU is known. The only public figures are cumulative BOOTH sales and the 10,000 likes on the distribution page. If sales ever drop, there is nothing on hand to separate competition from market conditions from his own update cadence.

Competitors are in fact appearing. The sixth-anniversary post in March 2025 mentions Desktop Mate and uDesktopMascot, and takes a wait-and-see stance, judging that they “do not particularly compete.” In the same post he notes that he became unemployed in February and was job hunting, and that the rule against spending VMagicMirror revenue on living costs still held. That detail makes clear this is not a story about going independent on indie software.

The use of the money is equally consistent. The ¥10 million has gone toward tuition at the Open University of Japan, commissioning his own avatar, and Skeb requests, with an explicit note that he spends it “within a range that does not raise my quality of life.” Not raising his standard of living is also, read another way, a way of ensuring that a drop in sales creates no pressure to quit.

What transfers and what does not

What transfers most easily is the design move itself: replacing “payment for features” with “payment for continuity.” For a developer who already publishes a free tool or library, leaving the free version intact and adding a place to pay damages the existing user experience far less than carving features out to build a paid tier. Shipping updates regularly and keeping the app usable in English are equally copyable as practice.

What does not transfer is the setting. VMagicMirror worked because the VRM format spread, more people started putting avatars on screen daily, and the Windows desktop was a thinly contested place to stand. The direction the market moved and the direction the software faced stayed aligned for a long stretch. On top of that, a salaried income is what makes every one of those judgments possible, not spending the revenue, not projecting desperation, not restricting features. Choosing the same design with your livelihood on the line is much harder.

The developer says as much. Acknowledging survivorship bias, he writes that this does not apply to every platform or genre. Asked whether anyone can grow sales on BOOTH, his own answer is no: you get there if you work hard and are also lucky. That footnote carries more information than the ¥10 million headline.