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

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.

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

#7

Post by sph » Thu, Feb 02, 2023, 10:59 AM UTC

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #2

The drop-off after launch is pretty wild.

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.

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

#8

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 02, 2023, 11:04 AM UTC

[deleted]

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

#9

Post by dschuetz » Thu, Feb 02, 2023, 11:05 AM UTC

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

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

#10

Post by SXX » Thu, Feb 02, 2023, 11:06 AM UTC

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #2

The drop-off after launch is pretty wild.

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.