Dwarf Fortress financials mark fairytale ending for indie developer

In a nutshell: Numerous tech giants like Meta, Google, Amazon, and Apple posted destructive quarterly and annual statements this week. Amidst the company gloom, it is good to see financials that inform a hopeful story for a small firm, particularly one behind a sport as standard as Dwarf Fortress.

A month after the primary business launch of Dwarf Fortress, the sport’s developer revealed this week that it earned $7.23 million in gross sales. Based on Bay 12 Video games’ comparability, the quantity eclipses returns from the earlier 4 months by two decimal factors.

In every of the months between September and December 2022, Bay 12 Video games introduced in round $15,000, most of it possible from Patreon donations. After providing the immensely standard Dwarf Fortress solely as freeware for 16 years, the corporate launched the primary business model on December 6, and some weeks later posted the astronomical January improve.

In a publish on the Bay 12 boards, the builders say nearly half of the cash pays taxes. Nonetheless, after enterprise bills and payrolls, what’s left is well sufficient to alleviate the scare that originally pushed the Dwarf Fortress builders – brothers Zach and Tarn Adams – towards the paid launch mannequin.

In 2019, Zach needed remedy for pores and skin most cancers. Fortunately, his spouse’s insurance coverage softened the $10,000 blow, however an analogous scenario would’ve been disastrous had it occurred to Tarn. To construct a monetary security web, the brothers determined to prepare a business model of Dwarf Fortress with enhanced graphics and tutorials for brand new gamers (whereas sustaining the free model for hardcore followers).

The payout means the brothers haven’t got to fret as a lot about well being and retirement. In addition they introduced that they are bringing a brand new worker to work on the complete code.

For these unfamiliar, Dwarf Fortress is a notoriously deep and sophisticated simulation sport the place gamers handle a bunch of dwarfs making an attempt to outlive and construct a fortress. The title is thought for dynamically calculating extraordinarily granular features of its world and characters like well being statuses, moods, physique elements, and full histories.

By default, the free model shows all its graphics in ASCII, and its gameplay could be intimidating for a lot of. The paid model, accessible on Steam and itch.io for $30, is extra accessible however will obtain updates in parity with the free edition.