Featured Image Credit: Valve, Bay 12, Kitfox Games
Topics: Steam, PC, Indie Games
An indie game about managing a colony of dwarves eking out an existence in an impossibly intricate world determined by an enormous level of procedural generation has seen a 46,000% rise in earnings since launching on Steam.
Now that's a happy ending, though the dwarves of Dwarf Fortress might not have one for themselves. The game was in a free public alpha for over a decade using text-based graphics to represent the individuals, animals, foliage, water levels, roads, towns, elevations and more. Then, announced in 2019, creators Zach and Tarn Adams said that there would be an enhanced version of the cult classic coming to Steam and itch.io, and this was released in December 2022.
Publisher Kitfox Games expected that 160,000 copies would be sold in the first two months, however this estimate was surpassed in the first day. And now, per Tarn's calculations, the game has earned over $7,000,000 from a 46,000% increase in sales.
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"The appreciation you give us is part of our being now," said Tarn. "It carries us in the cars we drive. It sustains us as the food that we eat. There is now no longer any existence except the one that you have provided. When we pass from this world, you will be the reason we are remembered."
A very sweet way of putting it, to be sure. Adams clarified that this total is before taxes and wages for those working on Dwarf Fortress, but this will make a huge difference to the developers and has allowed them to hire Putnam, a community manager, to continue improving the game.
"A little less than half will go to taxes, and we're continuing to pay people and new business expenses and such, so it's not all personal money, but a lot of it is, enough that we've solved the main issues of health/retirement that are troubling for independent people, as well as safeguarded the future of the game well enough that we felt comfortable bringing Putnam on to work with the full code and so forth," he continued. Just a wholesome story for this Friday.