The Spark Era: How a Payday 2 Skill Calculator Got Millions of Views and Paid for Pizza
From a side project to an NDA with Overkill Studios. This is the story of how a simple skill calculator website launched my journey into side projects, React Native at work, and the realization that programming is just digital Legos.
The Era That Started It All (2016-2017)
Looking back at my GitHub activity from early 2016, you’d see almost nothing. A single commit to my vim config in Q1. A lone PR in Q2. The classic “I’m learning git” pattern that every developer recognizes.
But behind the scenes, something was brewing that would change my entire trajectory.
When Passion Meets Opportunity
I was deep into Payday 2 at the time, one of those games that sucks you in with its heist mechanics and skill trees. And like any programmer playing a game with complex builds, I found myself thinking: “There has to be a better way to plan my character.”
So I built a skill calculator website. Angular on the frontend, hosted on AWS. Nothing fancy. Just scratching my own itch.
What happened next genuinely surprised me.
Millions of Visitors
The site took off. At its peak, I was seeing 30,000 visitors in a single day. The Payday 2 community was hungry for exactly what I’d built. Forums linked to it. Reddit threads recommended it. YouTubers used it in their build guides.
I remember my wife suggesting I should make an Android app for it. At the time, I thought it was silly. Why would someone pay for an app when they can just use the website? But I built it anyway, and also made an iOS version.
Over 2,000 sales between $3-$5 each. Thousands of dollars from a side project I’d built for fun.
The Little Caesars Moment
There’s this memory I keep coming back to. Walking home from Little Caesars with my wife in Urbana, she mentions the app idea. The next week, I’ve got it shipped, and I get a purchase notification while walking home from Little Caesars again.
That purchase effectively paid for our pizza.
It’s a small moment, but it perfectly captures what side projects can be: not about getting rich, but about building something useful and occasionally getting rewarded in ways that feel almost magical.
The NDA
Then Overkill Studios reached out.
The studio behind Payday 2 wanted to know if I’d update the website and prep for their upcoming skill tree overhaul. They couldn’t just tell me what was coming, of course, so they had me sign an NDA and gave me early access to their new skill system before it launched.
I never got paid for the work. It was just early access and the thrill of being trusted by a studio whose game I loved. Looking back, I probably should have negotiated harder. But at the time? It felt incredible.
The Heroes of the Storm Extension
After the Payday 2 success, I tried to replicate it with Heroes of the Storm. Made a similar app. It did okay, but never caught the same lightning. That’s the nature of side projects: sometimes you catch the wave, sometimes you don’t.
The commit data from this era tells an interesting story:
- Q3 2016: 12 commits on
pd2skills-app, dabbling in mobile with React Native - Q4 2016: Quiet on GitHub, but learning and exploring
- Q1-Q2 2017: Contributing to open source, starting to figure out this whole ecosystem
The Real Impact: Bringing React Native to Work
While building the Payday 2 mobile apps, I’d discovered React Native. And I was immediately hooked. Write once, deploy to iOS and Android? Sign me up.
This wasn’t just a side project skill. I brought it to my day job at a Fortune 500 financial company.
When I pitched React Native internally, they estimated it would save $7-10 million per year in development costs. By 2017, we were a React Native shop. That transition probably wouldn’t have happened (at least not as early) if I hadn’t been tinkering with Payday 2 skill calculators in my spare time.
What I Learned
This era taught me something important that I’ve carried ever since: programming is just digital Legos.
You don’t need a grand business plan. You don’t need investors. You just need an itch to scratch and the curiosity to scratch it. Sometimes you build something that helps 30,000 people a day. Sometimes you build something that only helps you.
Both are valid. Both are rewarding.
The Payday 2 calculator was never about money. It was about playing with code, solving a problem I personally had, and stumbling into something bigger than expected. That mentality (building for the joy of building) would define every side project that came after.
This is Part 1 of my retrospective series looking back at 20 years of side projects. Next up: The Smart Home Era, where I learned to 3D print sensor cases and automate my entire house.