Dwarf Fortress is a construction and management simulation game created by Bay 12 Games. It has been in development from 2002 by the Adam brothers, Zach and Tarn. After its release in 2006 in alpha, the project survived solely on donations but unfortunately never received the attention it deserved.
The game, which has been a massive hit amongst players, has absolutely smashed any sales targets it could have had when it first released on Steam on the 6th December 2022. In that time, the game has achieved an overwhelmingly positive score on Steam, with over 17,000 reviews as of today.
In a post on the Bay12 forum, a report was released confirming the amount the game had made over the month of January. Below is the amounts made in various months:
January: $7230123.58
December: $15635.07
November: $14071.27
October: $15374.72
September: $14679.51
As you can see from the above, the game brought in over 7 million dollars in little under a month, which is an incredible milestone considering the time spent on the game and only being released so recently. In the statement, Adams says, “All the gears have turned and that’s what we got, mostly yesterday ha ha. A little less than half will go to taxes, and we’re continuing to pay people and new business expenses and such, so it’s not all personal money, but a lot of it is, enough that we’ve solved the main issues of health/retirement that are troubling for independent people, as well as safeguarded the future of the game well enough that we felt comfortable bringing Putnam on to work with the full code and so forth. Thanks to everybody that helped out!”
In a post following on from this, they confirmed they have now hired a new developer to add to their team, who goes by the name of Putnam. Adams says, “Firstly, Putnam is a very prominent, long-time member of the Dwarf Fortress community and will be helping Toady with programming. This is a historic moment, as never before have non-Adams eyes seen the Dwarf Fortress code. Welcome, Putnam! We wish you luck and courage.”
It looks like the game isn’t stopping there either as the team are releasing regular updates and patches. On the 5th January, they released patch notes v50.05 which fixed a serious save corruption issue. The developers also keep in regular contact with players on several social media platforms, as well as streams over on Twitch.
