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

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

#101

Post by gizmo »

christkv wrote: post #89
program_whiz wrote: post #65

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.

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

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

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

#103

Post by moffkalast »

huhtenberg wrote: post #32

That's post-Steam-fees and pre-taxes. Irrespective of that - good for them, well-deserved IMO.

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.

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

#104

Post by [deleted] »

skjoldr wrote: post #73
bovermyer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by CydeWeys »

enkid wrote: post #98
paulluuk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)…

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

They said median net income, i.e. post-tax.

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

#106

Post by criley2 »

xavxav wrote: post #83
criley2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> 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…

We are in a post-Minecraft world, so I don't think your criticism has any merit.

Minecraft was a sandbox single-dev game that broke every mold and trope, and sold for $4 billion.

Me claiming that DF could be worth $100M in a world where Minecraft was worth $4B and is likely worth much more now... not a crazy take.

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

#107

Post by HEmanZ »

paulluuk wrote: post #82
program_whiz wrote: post #65

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.

> 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)…

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/

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

#108

Post by criley2 »

rob74 wrote: post #79
criley2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

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...

Minecraft released in 2009 with a price of $13 a copy. How'd that work out for them?

I am a bit older as a gamer so to hear that "2006 the market was small" is crazy to me! I grew up playing MUDs and believe me, the market for text games in 2006 was a lot bigger than it is today! From my perspective, monetizing the kids from the 80s/90s who loved text games with the best text game of all time as they turn 20s and 30s in the 2006... that's the best time in history to sell a text game.

I think that as part of DF being monetized, the graphics would be replaced, as it was for Steam, and potentially had it been done in 2D back in the 2000s, they could have envisioned and scaled into a 3D implementation by now. Who knows!

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

#109

Post by Reimersholme »

bovermyer wrote: post #29
Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #11

Please incorporate ChatGPT into this game! Imagine the storylines!

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.

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