Brothers Tarn and Zach Adams, creators of the legendary colony simulation game Dwarf Fortressrevealed that they made $7.2 million in January 2023, following the release of the Steam version of the game in December 2022.
The Adams brothers worked on the game for 20 years, with almost no help, and first released it to the public in 2006. But until its release on Steam, Dwarf Fortress always free to download and their work is fully supported by donations and Patreon.
In his posts on the official Bay 12 Games forums — the brothers’ studio name — Tarn Adams noted that the company was raking in between $14,000 and $16,000 per month prior to its Steam release. So that’s a huge leap in revenue!
It is also the amount of money that can change the lives of the Adams brothers, after decades of hard work with this game. “Almost half of this is going to be taxed and we’re continuing to pay people as well as new business expenses and so on, so it’s not all personal money, but a lot of it. there,” said Tarn. “Enough for us to address the major health/retirement issues that are plaguing independents, as well as protect the future of the game well enough.” The brothers said they now “feel comfortable” hiring another programmer to work full-time on the game.
IN a previous post In early January, Tarn said that the game sold nearly half a million copies in December, and it is likely revenue from those sales – minus the Steam cut and the cut taken by publisher Kitfox Games of Bay 12 – just landed at Bay’s bank 12 account.
Despite the game’s famous impenetrability — somewhat toned down by the realistic graphics of the Steam version (previously, the game used text-based ASCII art) — the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress was warmly received. Reviews on Steam are mostly positive, and fans quickly said how happy they were to pay for a game they played for free before.
What is that Dwarf Fortress, exactly? That’s not an easy question to answer – but we tried.
