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Why? Dwarf Fortress only exists because it was given away for free for decades, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars in donations, and eventually leading to
by AngryData 1mo ago
Why? Dwarf Fortress only exists because it was given away for free for decades, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars in donations, and eventually leading to a fandom popular enough to bring others onboard with the project to produce a GUI and paid steam release version.
If something you build brings in a lot of critique, it is likely something of great value. Because something that doesn't have value won't bring much critique at all.
- izacus 1mo agoTens of thousands dollars of donations over decades is a very small amount of money even outside US.
- olmo23 1mo agoThe premium version of Dwarf Fortress made over $7.2 million in its first month alone.
- aqme28 1mo ago"first month" is really obscuring the decade or beforehand. That's 20 years of development before the premium version launched
- Sander_Marechal 1mo agoSo that's 360K/year over 20 years?
- aqme28 1mo agoAnd a lot more from subsequent months, but I don't think it's a problem that this wildly successful videogame made its developers decently rich.
- Sander_Marechal 1mo agoOh I fully agree. I hope Tarn an Zach make millions more and can keep working of their life's work for many years to come.
- olmo23 1mo agoIt made an additional $23 million after the first month.
- OkayPhysicist 1mo agoTheir donation revenue was alright for a pretty significant chunk of that time. For the first decade it was ~$5k/month, which jumped up to ~$10k/month for the second decade before the Steam release. Toady wasn't exactly raking in the cash, but he didn't need another job.
- tripleee 1mo agoit was ~10k per month if I remember correctly. They used to post monthly updates