Over a million dollars, wow, pretty amazing! According to the JSON file, each of the developers will be getting $130,000+, right? I'm sure they will be eating a nice success steak tonight... or a fatty veggie burrito for the vegetarians, heh.
On the one hand, it's not an easy stunt to reproduce. These are great games at a massive discount in a well-publicized event. Not surprising you can make money at that.
On the other hand, none of these games are very new. Games are usually like movies: a lot of sales in the opening weeks followed by a quick convergence to zero as they fall off the radar. A million dollars is not a lot of money split seven ways and then split again among developers. But I'm sure it's great for games headed for the bargain bin.
Certainly there are a lot of games out there great enough in their day to be worth playing even now that technology has moved on. HOTU is evidence enough of that. A service that sold only hand-picked classics, polished for modern platforms, at cheap prices? Yeah. I'd buy that.
Is that still true though? I can see this being the case with physical copies having to fight for top shelf space in stores, but it may have changed a bit with online distribution channels. A few month old games that get a price reduction, or classics that get a special campaign price, regularly go to the top of the Steam sales list for a couple of days. Especially those who have gained a positive word of mouth reputation online. Long tail phenomenon?
"HOTU is evidence enough of that"
Hordes of the Underdark? puzzled. Oh, Home of the Underdogs. :)