They Waited 20 Years For Game's Success, Became Millionaires and People Approve
Commercial edition of Dwarf Fortress has made the game's developers into millionaires. They intend to spend the money sparingly, as they have plans to develop the game for years to come, perhaps even for the rest of their lives.
Equally a week ago the strategy game Dwarf Fortress, the revamped version of the iconic indie game from Bay 12 Games, launched on Steam. The premiere turned out to be a great success.
- In an interview with PC Gamer the devs boasted that sales figures of the game have already exceeded 300,000 copies. A day after the release it was 160 thousand, so the developers managed to almost double this result over the next six days.
- The authors can count on the game to sell well for a long time - yesterday, the publisher Kitefox Games announced that Dwarf Fortress is on the wishlists of more than one million Steam users.
- On the Steam forums a massive thread appeared, in which one user wonders how the game could have received thousands of player reviews within hours of its release. He asked if all those users had played the free version of Dwarf Fortress and were just waiting to spend $30 on the commercial release? The thread is 240 pages long and practically consists entirely of answers containing only one word: "Yes."
- Player reviews reflect the delight of the community - on Steam, as many as 96% of them praise Dwarf Fortress, which is categorized as "overwhelmingly positive" reception.
- The activity results are also very impressive. Yesterday a new record was set at 28,340 concurrent users on Steam. It is worth noting that the popularity of the game is growing all the time, which bodes well for the future.
What will the developers do with all that cash
The creators, namely Tarn Adams and Zach Adams, admit, that they are intimidated by the success. The free version was developed thanks to donations from fans, but in recent years the scale of this support has significantly decreased. The devs explained the decision to develop a commercial release by the fact that they needed health insurance and this was the only way they would be able to afford it.
Now, a week after the game's release, Tarn Adams and Zach Adams have become millionaires. They don't know much about what to do with this fact, except that one of them wants to buy a bigger house for himself and his wife. However, the devs intend to be very modest with their spending. Indeed, they have no plans to develop a sequel. Instead, they want to continue developing Dwarf Fortress, so what they've obtained so far plus the proceeds from further sales must suffice them practically for the rest of their lives.
Further development plans for Dwarf Fortress are ambitious. They include, among other things, a new and wildly expanded magic and myth system, improved siege and army mechanisms, a refreshed economy and rebuilt concepts of virtual civilizations. In the longer term, ships should be added to the game, but we'll have to wait many years for that.
