Bay 12 Games has made $7M from the Steam release of Dwarf Fortress

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=181354.0

by sph • 3 years ago

744 294 3 years ago

The drop-off after launch is pretty wild.

mouse_2• 3 years ago

Yeah, I'm waiting for adventure mode. That's the only part of this game that ever interested me; I wanna play it like a roguelike/dungeon crawler.

hrydgard• 3 years ago

What dropoff? The newest number is on top.

(Though yeah, there will be a dropoff for sure, it's just not visible here).

usrusr2• 3 years ago

There has been a discount.

ad404b8a372f2b92• 3 years ago

Ha, I should really learn to read.

sph2• 3 years ago

If you mean in player count, that's normal.

Peak is always during launch day, then there's a long tail, and very successful games might slowly rise after a couple years and surpass the launch peak.

While Dwarf Fortress has had a fantastic launch, it will never be a wildly popular game to increase its player base by much more than its release, especially in the oversaturated gaming market of today.

smcl• 3 years ago

Yeah there's always a fairly substantial drop-off. Dwarf Fortress[0] dropping by half from 14k on average down to 7k one month later is roughly the same as Elden Ring[1] (522k to 211k) but on a slightly different scale

[0] https://steamcharts.com/app/975370

[1] https://steamcharts.com/app/1245620

Nzen• 3 years ago

If you would like to hear an analysis of these two trends, Jason Rohrer goes over launch day sales for a game he released in 2014 and 2018 in this gdc talk [0].

[0] https://youtu.be/sIqz5xmQKnc?t=506 While the entire video is 32 minutes, the relevant section is about 5 minutes.

SXX3• 3 years ago

For normal commercial games there is a formula of how you can estimate first year and lifetimes sales of specific title:

    Sales in first 2 months * 2 = Sales in first year
    Sales in first year * 2 = Lifetime sales

Since DF is very special project it's will likely have much longer tail of sales, but most likely math would be about the same during first 3-5 years.

PS: I'm game developer and this is industry standard to estimate sales.

usrusr2• 3 years ago

And that's for regular releases. I'd be surprised if the initial drop wasn't much stronger for something that has already been a living legend for many years. That initial wave of "oh, I've heard so much of them, probably won't play even with a graphical mode, but I still want it in my library" is one of a kind. The long tail will probably be much flatter, but only compare to regular releases once you separate out everybody who bought in roughly the same way those nice hardback Shakespeare collections are bought.

somenameforme2• 3 years ago

Most games are developed, a bit of effort/money directed on promotion/marketing, dropped, and then onto the next project. So I think these numbers are more of a reflection of developer than consumer trends. Games that are developed in a different way often show [very] different trends. One of the most extreme examples I can think of is Kenshi. Its SteamDB [1] numbers are something else! It was made by one guy who worked as a security guard to make ends meet while making it.

Of course making games has to be a labor of love though. I mean the guy had double digit player counts for years, and sales likely reflective of that (if not worse), while he continued to keep developing a game that he was clearly building for himself at least as much as for "the market."

And as for Dwarf Fortress, it's kind of in a mixed zone, because it got the sort of big marketing/promotion push that's usually reserved for "fire it and forget it" type titles, and the consequent drop in players it entails as you ended up doing things like attracting players who thought they were buying 'The Sims - Ultra Detailed Dwarven Edition With Retro Graphics' and quit after 30 minutes. But I really don't think that's the developer's plan. So I suppose we'll see!

poulpy1234• 3 years ago

there is no drop off visible yet, the first number is also their latest (january but I guess it also cover the december sales)

ilyt• 3 years ago

Those are preceding months and are not sales but donations

officeplant• 3 years ago

Still waiting to join the second wave of macOS buyers stuck on the original game.

AlwaysRock5• 3 years ago

I was confused initially as well but you are reading it backwards. They were getting ~15k a month before launch and that jumped to 7 mill after launch. I am very interested to see what it normalizes to. 100K a month? several hundred? 15K a month again?

mouse_2• 3 years ago

Awesome.

rav• 3 years ago

That's incredible! Congratulations to the generous indeed. I played the old game many years back and was once also a monthly supporter, but these days I have less time to play, so I bought the Steam version primarily to support Bay 12.

It's so nice to see such great support. I wonder what the monthly level of income from Steam will be in the future.

jmorenoamor• 3 years ago

Me too, I might try a fortress this summer on vacation, but for now, I gave them my support for their love and dedication

dschuetz• 3 years ago

Well, yes. Charging 30$ will generate those numbers for such an anticipated game.

flohofwoe• 3 years ago

It could also have completely flopped though, since the classic version is free and for die hard DF fans who know all hotkeys inside out there's little actual reason to switch to the Steam version.

But they did a really good job making the game approachable to newcomers.

somenameforme2• 3 years ago

Many of the other big classic style roguelikes on Steam, like ADoM and ToME, also have free versions available. And those games also do excellently (though nowhere near as well as DF is doing).

Games are still such a refreshing change from the MBA driven coercion in much of other business, and especially tech. Make a good product, and people will buy it. And appealing to a micro-niche is still enough to make one a multi millionaire.

lelanthran• 3 years ago

It could also have completely flopped though, since the classic version is free and for die hard DF fans who know all hotkeys inside out there's little actual reason to switch to the Steam version.

For diehard DF fans "supporting the creator" is a large enough reason, even if they never intend to play the steam version.

badpun• 3 years ago

Plenty of people wanted to try out DF, but didn’t want to invest into learning the obscure interface.

Slippery_John2• 3 years ago

for die hard DF fans who know all hotkeys inside out there's little actual reason to switch to the Steam version

They made the game so much more playable it's hard to understate. We're not even talking mouse vs keyboard here. They made one of the core mechanics (labor assignment) go from something that essentially required a third party tool to manage to something that is trivial to manage in its vanilla state. Sure it took some adjustment for long-time players and some prefer the algorithms used by those custom tools, but those tools are being made available.

Mengkudulangsat2• 3 years ago

Please incorporate ChatGPT into this game! Imagine the storylines!

danuker• 3 years ago

Imagine the OpenAI bill.

Mercury55• 3 years ago

Imagine developing the tech be usable in any game.

sveeeeeene• 3 years ago

I would like AI generated images of monsters, heroes, items and events

hoseja• 3 years ago

It's such an obvious usecase. Can't wait for a workable implementation somewhere.

b800h• 3 years ago

...based entirely on the images from Moraff's Dungeon please.

bovermyer2• 3 years ago

I disagree vehemently and violently with this suggestion. Dwarf Fortress's charm results from human-crafted procedures interacting in unexpected and fascinating ways.

If ChatGPT (or other AI bullshit generators) were used instead, it would change the experience entirely.

skjoldr• 3 years ago

What do you mean "instead"? A custom GPT would have to be crafted for this game by humans anyway, and used to augment the human-written content. Much of this game's gameplay is emergent and hard to predict using deterministic algorithms.

Mengkudulangsat2• 3 years ago

You gotta admit DFs name / description generation is just gobbledygook most of the time. Tastefully applied, AI bullshit generators will do wonders to readability.

Kiro2• 3 years ago

Why are you so aggressively dismissing ChatGPT? Maybe it has no place in this game but it's a technological marvel nonetheless.

jtms8• 3 years ago

I violently AGREE with you! <the severed comment flies off in an arc!>

MagicMoonlight2• 3 years ago

Once we get that kind of generation into games it will be incredible.

sph2• 3 years ago

"Please add ChatGPT" is the new "please rewrite it in Rust."

poulpy1234• 3 years ago

Please rewrite it in rust with chatGPT !

cabirum• 3 years ago

...and NFT item store with prices in dwarfcoins?

Kiro2• 3 years ago

What does NFT has to do with anything? What's with people on this site thinking one of the biggest tech revolution of our lifetime is the same as a scam that has no utility whatsoever?

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 3 years ago

Actually I think this might be a very useful addition to Legends mode. Right now it is pretty tedious and difficult to extract meaningful narrative from what is essentially a log dump, but if there were a LLM trained to weave those dry tomes into wild stories that would be pretty neat.

zexodus• 3 years ago

I was about to throw some money down their way, but apparently the steam version does not work on Mac M1/M2. I'm too young/uninitiated/whatever/visually_oriented to play the older version.

detaro• 3 years ago

People apparently have gotten the windows version to work through wine, there's some guides in the steam forums for the game.

haunter• 3 years ago

It works https://re-actor.net/dwarf-fortress-how-to-run-the-game-on-m...

But you need the actual files downloaded obviously. So you either have to have a PC where you can download the game files from Steam (Windows VM works too) and then copy over to your Mac. Or you can buy the game from itch.io (it's the same but you also get self-extracting archive + you get a Steam key as well) https://kitfoxgames.itch.io/dwarf-fortress

tinyhitman• 3 years ago

With steamcmd (the steam client CLI) one can download whatever version of their owned games they want.

aequitas• 3 years ago

I bought the Steam version and run it in Wine on both an Intel and M1 Mac. I ended up refunding the Steam version and bought it on itch.io so I could just directly download the game files and updates instead of having to mess with Steam inside Wine (the Mac Steam does not allow you to download Windows files). Also you get a Steam key with itch.io, so when they release a proper Mac version I can add it to my library still.

There are (where?) some issues with missed mouse presses (double click issue) which make it really annoying to play, but there is a workaround for that which worked fine for me: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=28983...

poisonarena• 3 years ago

(the Mac Steam does not allow you to download Windows files).

you can !

https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/ej1sid/download_wind...

ilaksh• 3 years ago

A little less than half goes to taxes. Is that normal?

atdrummond• 3 years ago

Yes. There are ways they could have minimized that payment but it doesn’t seem that the team is primarily money motivated in the first place, so may as well just make the process simple and pay up.

fragmede• 3 years ago

What ways are you thinking of? They could have incorporated and posted losses for 2? straight years before the IRS started auditing; those losses could have been deducted against this revenue. What other angles are there?

Aeolun• 3 years ago

Corporate tax and personal income tax?

MagicMoonlight2• 3 years ago

They made 7m in personal income in one month, how would that not be normal

komali23• 3 years ago

It implies a near 50% tax rate, anywhere in the usa, even California, that seems really high.

alpaca128• 3 years ago

People are just used to wealthy people gaming the tax system to a point it's shocking when someone actually pays them.

masakreTech• 3 years ago

And? - Cherry games with Hollow Knight have made more money and it's just a team of three people.

dunefox• 3 years ago

Hollow Knight is not even remotely close to the complexity and effort of dwarf fortress.

TheUndead96• 3 years ago

We can celebrate things separately. One good thing does not detract from another.

hinkley• 3 years ago

Jealous people don’t think that way though, unfortunately.

kelvie• 3 years ago

" Comparing accomplishments is a short-circuit pathway to tearing others down."

This is from a comment that I read on HN a few days ago that really stuck out to me, and applies here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34581366

an-honest-moose• 3 years ago

And Minecraft blows all of them out of the water. That's not the point here. The point is that Dwarf Fortress has been a labor of love for two decades and it's nice to see these guys get some solid financial security for all that hard work.

Archelaos• 3 years ago

The fairytale ending is reality, but you didn’t kiss the toad.

Some philological pedantery: In the canonical Brothers Grimm version of The Frog Prince, the frog does not turn into a prince when kissed but when smashed against a wall.

qcic• 3 years ago

Which is much more gruesome and makes a lot more sense. I expect more hesitancy in potentially killing the prince than kissing a frog.

IncRnd2• 3 years ago

Followed by: But, as he fell, he was changed from a frog into a handsome Prince with beautiful eyes, and after a little while he became, with her father’s consent, her dear companion and playmate. [1]

[1] https://www.pookpress.co.uk/the-frog-prince-story-a-tale-by-...

caporaltito• 3 years ago

From now on, I will switch to this version for my child's story before sleep

mijoharas• 3 years ago

Sounds like polymorph from DND to me.

The transformation lasts for the duration, or until the target drops to 0 hit points or dies.

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Polymorph#content

[Edit] trimmed quote

FeepingCreature• 3 years ago

But as he fell, he was changed from a frog into a handsome prince, who then had to make death saving throws for a few rounds but luckily the princess had Lay On Hands, and so they lived happily ever after.

mlindner• 3 years ago

I'm not sure if you can call Brothers Grimm version "canonical" as from my understanding all they did was document in writing single versions of already well known folk tales that were carried through generations by oral memory. Many of which had many different versions depending on who told the story. So I'm not sure you can use the word "canonical" in this case.

kilgnad6• 3 years ago

Its possible it still fits the word. The bible is canonical too even though it's basically a pieces of disparate texts.

Basically if it's the first and earliest record and the one that everyone looks to as the most accurate source it's canonical.

kirushik• 3 years ago

Grimmsc version is a bit weird then, because there is a plausibly-sounding "freundian" interpretation of the most common folklore version, in which a frog turning into a prince after being kissed is a thinly veiled metaphor for fellatio.

That said, in the most common Russian folk version it's *Princess* Frog (Царевна Лягушка), and the metaphor is not working that well once again.

poulpy1234• 3 years ago

How is it even remotely plausible ?

BiteCode_dev• 3 years ago

I was expecting this threads to turn into a fire dumpster, and instead it turned into exactly the kind of debate I read HN for.

huhtenberg• 3 years ago

That's post-Steam-fees and pre-taxes.

Irrespective of that - good for them, well-deserved IMO.

moffkalast• 3 years ago

I wonder if they had a different agreement than standard or Steam just cashed out something north of $3 million from this alone.

It's true what they say: Valve used to make games, now they make money.

eatsyourtacos5• 3 years ago

Valve used to make games, now they make money

You can say that, but really what they moved to is creating a platform that saved PC gaming. I can't imagine where we would be at without Steam.

There would be 20 different platforms we would have to install full of bloatware garbage and everything would be horrific as all fuck. Indie games would be having a much harder time, because sure there would be other things out there but again it would be so split that it would be hard to even hear of games to get traction. PC game prices are a damn steal, which helps everyone because at $15-20 I will buy way more than $50-$60 a pop. Every platform would have it's own bullshit DRM that would make things a nightmare.

Steam allows offline play, family sharing.. it just freakin works without being fancy bullshit.

So yeah, they certainly make money. But I can't thank them enough for what they have done.

qwytw2• 3 years ago

I assume that's also post all the expenses incurred (and profit share) by their publishers, who I believe also did quite a bit of work on the Steam version. So total Steam revenue should be a bit higher than $10mil.

sprkwd• 3 years ago

Good for them.

IncRnd2• 3 years ago

Earlier this month:

  Dwarf Fortress has sold half a million copies (bay12forums.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34275149

curiousgal• 3 years ago

It's funny how, if those tax dollars were spent properly (helathcare instead of missiles), the brothers wouldn't have needed to make the Steam version of the game.

dang• 3 years ago

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34625181.

ThrowawayTestr• 3 years ago

Good for them. I'm so glad to see decades of hard work be rewarded.

student2k• 3 years ago

Good for them, hope they keep working on DF, as there are many things in the roadmap,

jmyeet• 3 years ago

I'm super happy for these guys. They really have struggled with donations for many years. It's nice to see them get the bag.

For those commenting on the sales drop off, it is a problem for AAA titles that a half-finished product gets sold to the public and then abandoned because it's easier to just move onto the next thing.

But I want to counter that with the story of No Man's Sky. I highly recommend the Internet Historian video on it [1]. The short version is for various reasons the game over-promised and under-delieved on launch but Sean and HelloGames have now spent years continuing to develop the game with free and significant updates. I can only imagine this still drives sales growth or it wouldn't be sustainable. But it's really repaired HG's and NMS's reputation. NMS has a real cult following now.

And then of course there's Minecraft whose long tail of sales is truly mind-blowing.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5BJVO3PDeQ

otikik• 3 years ago

Very happy for them and everyone involved

program_whiz2• 3 years ago

Glad to see this, because they have worked long and hard on this game. For the optimistic, divide ~$4m (post-tax) by team of 2 for ~20 years (they started work in 2002). They've made some money in the meantime obviously, but seeing the final profit doesn't accurately capture the overall investment. Just in case you were thinking of quitting your day job to become an overnight millionaire making indie games.

nevi-me2• 3 years ago

The tax should be post-expenses

kybernetyk• 3 years ago

What expenses would they have realistically? 2 PCs? if you mean their salary that still would be taxable at their personal income tax rate.

criley24• 3 years ago

This doesn't really make sense. They were a donations-run "charity" shop making a free game. They only decided to put it on Steam so they could fund a retirement as well as a future for the game.

For any indie devs out there: don't give your game away for free for 18 years if you want to make money. That's really the lesson here.

Had DF monetized in 2006 instead of going free, and played the industry game as others do, I would not be surprised to see DF at $100M in 2023.

kilgnad6• 3 years ago

Nah. DF became popular because it's free. That is a huge part of the allure.

rob74• 3 years ago

OTOH, if they would have asked money for it from the beginning, it may never have gotten as far as it did. The market for a commercial game with text graphics was pretty small even back in 2006...

xavxav• 3 years ago

Had DF monetized in 2006 instead of going free, and played the industry game as others do, I would not be surprised to see DF at $100M in 2023.

I don't DF would have existed then, it would be hard to see it gather the same community and the creators probably wouldn't have felt as free to explore their own ideas if they felt it needed to be commercially viable.

The thing that made DF's current commercial success is it's previously un-commercial approach. It's a true labor of love and that shows in every aspect of the game.

rkachowski• 3 years ago

There are many games that monetised in 2006 and are not worth $100M.

The indie gaming scene in 2006 was almost entirely freeware with a few exceptions. Indie games as a steam category - let alone industry - was unthinkable. Monetisation was essentially building a flash game to sell to an ad network, there's really no amount of industry game playing that could have been done.

program_whiz2• 3 years ago

The major lesson is "don't make indie games if you want to make money". There are 34 games released per day on steam. Most will have revenue under $1000 (and probably most will have revenue below $100).

Unless you have a talented team, marketing plan, and lots of capital you can burn for a gamble; or are willing to just do it for fun for years and don't care if it succeeds -- don't quit your job to make indie games. Otherwise you're playing Russian roulette. For every hollow knight, Dwarf Fortress, Celeste, there are 1000s of other titles you've never heard of.

ineedasername• 3 years ago

2006 was pre-Minecraft territory. Monetizing DF at that point in time would have been highly unlikely.

Also the game wasn’t built yet. Maybe they could have monetized earlier than this, but what does it matter? Maybe trying to monetized earlier would have killed the project or resulted in a game very different from today. Either way it doesn’t matter: there are different paths to success and not every one of them is an option for every game. DF found one though, and that’s what matters.

seanhunter• 3 years ago

Had DF monetized in 2006 instead of going free, and played the industry game as others do, I would not be surprised to see DF at $100M in 2023.

I didn't play DF in 2006 but I did play it first in about 2011, and can categorically at that point it was so user-hostile and batshit crazy there's no way the trajectory you're talking about would have been possible. Even just the normally-simple step of getting a copy of the game you could run was a bizarro-world nightmare involving multiple trips to the bay12 forum and searching for threads to find the download link etc.

Eg if you look at this example Youtube tutorial series from 2015, the first 2 episodes are all stuff before you actually launch the game. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0sBhCMFBvPlF7wG7OH-N...

paulluuk2• 3 years ago

divide ~$4m (post-tax) by team of 2 for ~20 years

So about $100k per year, per person (after taxes)

I know that this is nothing out in Silicon Valley, but for reference, the median income in the US is $19k (net) per year, and about $15k (net) per year in Europe (if you include eastern Europe).

I can't tell from your comment whether you feel 100k is high (hence the "optimistic") or low (hence the warning at the end).

axus• 3 years ago

They've also been receiving donations since early on. Last time I checked they were up to 100k per year, but it started much smaller. I donated $20 back in the days when they'd send back an ASCII art scene in email or crayon drawing.

davedx• 3 years ago

the median income in the US is $19k (net) per year

It's way higher, between $50-70k https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...

enkid• 3 years ago

Where are you getting $19k per year as the median income?

HEmanZ3• 3 years ago

So much depends on how you measure it. But median individual income in the US is quite a bit higher than 19k no matter how you measure it.

Real, adjusted, individual including non working and part-time population above 15yo: $38k/yr

Including only full-time workers: $57k

Median household income: $71k

The US has enough problems, no need to make up much smaller income numbers than the reality.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/

sam0x17• 3 years ago

Imagine how much they could have made by now if they had launched on steam 10 years ago

PragmaticPulp3• 3 years ago

I know that this is nothing out in Silicon Valley, but for reference, the median income in the US is $19k (net) per year, and about $15k (net) per year in Europe (if you include eastern Europe).

Your (net) number in the US is way too low.

The real (aka inflation adjusted) median earnings for US workers is around $42K before taxes.

Tax rates at the lower end of the income spectrum in the US are very low. Federal income tax is effectively 0% for the bottom income brackets, though they’ll have to pay some payroll taxes, state taxes, sales taxes, and others along the way. Even considering that, there’s no way to go from the >$40K median earnings to your $19K net income figure.

paulluuk2• 3 years ago

I quickly grabbed the numbers from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_..., where I just copied the number from the "W-2 Median Wages" graph, however I have no idea what W-2 is so that might explain why so many people are saying I'm wrong. Also I used "real wages" which seems to be corrected for inflation rather than the actual numbers.

vkou• 3 years ago

They were only making 12k per month in the last few years. For a long time, it was closer to 2-4k a month.

adventured• 3 years ago

the median income in the US is $19k (net) per year, and about $15k (net) per year in Europe

That's off by close to half. The median income in the US is around $37,000 [1], the median full-time income is around $53,000 [2] and the median US household income is up over $70,000 [3].

It's also worth noting that those median incomes are paying low tax rates on that income (typically ~15%-20% including federal + state + local + fica, depending on the location).

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

[2] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

christkv• 3 years ago

If they are smart the money will be taken out as dividend and thus only pay capital gains tax.

gizmo• 3 years ago

They are smart which is why they are spending their lives working on something they love instead of worrying about tax optimization nonsense.

ethbr0• 3 years ago

Out of curiosity, are there tax options (specifically, retroactive ones) for this situation?

As near as I know: (1) they formed a company at some point in the past (S-corp?), (2) they did constant work per year, (3) they had some donations per year, (4) they suddenly had a large amount of revenue in 2022

I'm guessing they didn't fully account for their time/expenses in prior years.

If they didn't, are there options to go back and amend previous returns in amounts that would be meaningful? (Assuming they have proof, etc.)

jermaustin12• 3 years ago

Dividends are not automatically treated as capital gains, but in this situation, its possible they would be considered "qualified". The company being formed in the US, the dividends being paid out to US share holders, and the shareholders holding the stock for at least 60 days (120 days in some circumstances).

This really only applies to C-Corps as well, and then you run into the Double Taxation of C-Corp income and pay a 21% tax rate at the corporation, then additional capital gains on the dividend income.

BUT dividends would be tax free up to around $80k of income (any income (salaries, 1099, etc., also assuming married), then they would be taxed at 15% - 25% above that, but do not forget, the corporation has already paid 21%.

So optimizing for qualified-dividend-only income requires a LOT of forethought, and either accepting a lower income (since the benefit maxes out at $80k total income), or paying 15-25% + 21% for a 36-46% tax rate on your dividends.

elil17• 3 years ago

They'd also likely pay the corporate tax rate in that case, which is 21%. Tack on 20% for the highest cap gains bracket, and you're at 41% federal unless you can work your way out of it with some loophole (e.g. carried losses on the cap gains side, idk what on the corporate side). FICA caps at something like $150k, so they'd actually be paying more than the highest income bracket of 37%.

The really smart move (or evil move, depending how you see it) would have been to start the business within a Roth IRA. Then you'd just pay the 21% corporate tax rate.

ivalm• 3 years ago

I think for this amount an llc+pass through is still likely less tax.

eps• 3 years ago

They were also making 14-15K per month before that (it's mentioned in the post), so they were already extraordinarily successful as far as 2-person indie gamedev teams go.

RektBoy• 3 years ago

From what?

dmarchand902• 3 years ago

Yeah but they were not making that much the whole time. If you look back some years they were just scraping by.

genocidicbunny• 3 years ago

As far as indie devs, yes, but in the greater scheme of things that is still fairly pittance money. $180k pre-tax split two ways, and then eaten into heartily by health insurance (Tarn and his brother have mentioned that medical issues are what pushed them to do the Steam release) doesn't leave a whole lot.

But that also means that as long as they don't significantly increase the cost of their lifestyle, that $7m pre-tax will go a very long way.

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

Perhaps if they'd put it on steam 10 years ago the numbers would look better.

miga• 3 years ago

Question is whether they recorded investment in the Dwarf Fortress over the years, so they could subtract it from the base of the tax.

They spent more time on this game than on any other.

hnthrowaway0328• 3 years ago

Yeah it is pretty good, but not as good if someone really wants to take the risk. There are people, e.g. fund managers and corporate CXOs that talk about they get the big bucks because they take the risk, but TBH what risks do they experience? If something fucked up they can simply walk away, usually with fat profits for their own. On the other hand, a couple of indie developers risked getting nothing from a full-time job, that's what real risk-taking sounds like.

efields• 3 years ago

Just let it be good. It doesn't need to be more. It doesn't need to be such high risk all the time.

warent• 3 years ago

You're thinking this in a very capitalist way which seems completely unrelated to these two gentlemen. These guys are now profiting off the game out of necessity, not because they're finally "cashing in" on all their "risk". From the beginning, this was a passion project and an expression of themselves. Not an investment.

larsiusprime• 3 years ago

Don't forget the publisher's cut!

tinus_hn• 3 years ago

In calculating this you should also keep in mind the very real risk that that game you’re spending 20 years on doesn’t pan out and people don’t buy it. That risk makes it reasonable for the reward to be high.

slackfan• 3 years ago

Nice! Grats to Bay 12 for an excellent launch, and a successful shoring up of their future.

shever73• 3 years ago

So happy for Tarn and Zach. DF is a truly special game, and I'm happy that they've been able to secure both theirs and DF's future.

I wish an easier Mac release was available, but I'll keep checking.

pyrrhotech• 3 years ago

Very well deserved, and something they should have done a long time ago. Better late than never

jeffwask• 3 years ago

This is a triumph of indie game dev. Really happy for them.

qrush2• 3 years ago

So very glad to see this as a long time DF player. The new version on Steam is an incredible leap, and it's clear the only way this would have happened is with a real partner that could help them bring the game to a bigger market. Excited for the next 20 years of building fortresses with my depressed dwarves.

jtms8• 3 years ago

Just spritz them with water mist and they’ll be fine!

qrush2• 3 years ago

Working on that for my fortress now but I have managed to flood the caverns with a river I've redirected...

AcerbicZero• 3 years ago

I'm a bit addicted to Rimworld when it comes to this genre, but I bought DF just to support the OG's - plus I wasted 4 months on a terrible contract job and the only thing that kept me sane was playing Liberal crime squad in the background.

izzydata• 3 years ago

What are they going to do next? Perhaps they will start a studio, hire some more people and work on some new endeavors with this money?

b4je7d7wb• 3 years ago

I think they will just keep working on df the way they have so far for another 20 years before retiring.

jtms8• 3 years ago

I really hope so, but I also hope they continue to work with the UI team… the Steam version changes have really impressed me!

Arrath2• 3 years ago

They've already hired another developer to work on the game with them.

I doubt they have any grander plans than continuing to work on DF, its their life's work after all.

OkayPhysicist• 3 years ago

They have a roadmap on their site. At the historical rate of development, the game will continue to be developed by Toady until his death, upon which (barring suspicious circumstances) the game's source code will be released.

ismyrnow• 3 years ago

A little less than half will go to taxes...

:sad:

jliptzin• 3 years ago

I haven’t played it, and I have no doubt it is an amazing game I would enjoy. But how do people have time for all these games? There are so many compelling games out there, each demanding hundreds or thousands of hours of time to fully enjoy.

capableweb4• 3 years ago

Every now and then you find some hours to play. I play games maybe less than an hour per day, some free days I play more, with my most played game being Factorio with 175 hours, and I'm proficient in it + feel like I've spent a lot of time playing it, but I also owned it since 2015 or something like that, so 2922 hours available, 175 spent on Factorio so around 0.06 hours per day, calculated that way.

I tend to prefer "complicated" games that require some sort of time investment to figure out (once figured out, they don't remain as fun for me), but there is no game I've spent more time on than Factorio, and it's "just" 175 hours over the years, which is very low if I compare it to others.

Summary is, you don't have to spend 100s/1000s of hours in any game in order to fully enjoy it.

WXLCKNO2• 3 years ago

I hate that I feel guilty for playing games which require a time investment. Factorio is exactly the type of game I would like to play.

However I'm "stuck" playing games with short matches and no long single player games. It's easy to put 5 minutes into Rocket League because it feels like just a burst of gaming but then you can do 20 games in a row and still put in an hour.

Semaphor• 3 years ago

No children, or children who are old enough, probably helps. As does not working more than 40h a week (or even less). In my case, it’s also home office (= no commute) that helps.

jtms8• 3 years ago

You should try “staying up late”! You wait for everyone else to go to sleep and then you get a solid 2-4 hours to fully immerse yourself in glorious escapism. The next day, in the midst of suffering from sleep deprivation, you wonder why in the hell you did that and that tonight you will be going to bed early! (And then you don’t)

AlwaysRock5• 3 years ago

Most people dont. Thus the ever-growing backlog. This applies to movies, books, games... You enjoy what you can.

seanw444• 3 years ago

Play it little by little when you do have time. Play whichever game captures your intrigue the most. Don't waste time on deciding which one to play.

azernik7• 3 years ago

Work-life balance, and selectivity.

Personally, I don't buy games until they're old enough to be on 50% sale and the reviews are in.

If you're interested in reviews and community based around limited time, I'd highly recommend reddit.com/r/patientgamers.

HDThoreaun2• 3 years ago

I think the main trick is not having kids, plus remote work has given lots of people ~2 hours a day back.

jabroni_salad• 3 years ago

As a general rule, people carving out hundreds to thousands of hours for a game are not enjoying 'all these' games, they are enjoying specifically that one and maybe one or two more if they want a change of pace.

Also, I personally find that games like DF lend themselves well to having a podcast, audiobook, or twitch stream open on the side. It isn't like a big setpiece voice acted narrative game that demands your full attention.

ixtli• 3 years ago

I’m so happy for them. This really made my day.

TheRealPomax• 3 years ago

Slowest start-up in history. Good for them.

AlwaysRock5• 3 years ago

Really interested to see what their revenue numbers will look like when sales normalize. It will probably take a few months but will they be at 100K a month mid year? Really interesting what the staying power of DF will be now that it is more accessible.

xkcd19632• 3 years ago

Exciting times lay ahead

andrei_says_• 3 years ago

Another overnight success preceded by decades of hard work.

fortituded0002• 3 years ago

Are these sales numbers or how much they make after everyone else gets their cut? Is that what they mean by "taxes"? Steam takes 30%. The publisher can easily take 50%, but they may have negotiated better terms due to the funds they put in on their own and that it's an existing game.

xkcd19632• 3 years ago

If they could make this multiplayer, I'd pay goldnuggets

tiffanyh2• 3 years ago

Why did they wait so long to charge for the game?

(I've never played it, so forgive my ignorance)

jy12• 3 years ago

This is a new version of the game with a GUI on steam. previously it was text only, and not very accessible.

tiffanyh2• 3 years ago

What about a text-only game, prevented them from charging for it?

japhib• 3 years ago

Keep in mind that Steam takes about 30% of all sales. But good for them! 20 years of work, and their game appearing in the Museum of Modern Art, should definitely result in some financial security!

59nadir• 3 years ago

This is after Steam's cut.

Bay 12 Games has made $7M from the Steam release of Dwarf Fortress

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