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Comment by aplummer | Hacker News Reader

This thread really inspired me to never release anything for free for decades.

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.

Tens of thousands dollars of donations over decades is a very small amount of money even outside US.

The premium version of Dwarf Fortress made over $7.2 million in its first month alone.

"first month" is really obscuring the decade or beforehand. That's 20 years of development before the premium version launched

So that's 360K/year over 20 years?

And 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.

Oh 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.

It made an additional $23 million after the first month.

Their 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.

it was ~10k per month if I remember correctly. They used to post monthly updates

You have to look to the people for whom those decades brought joy, and realize how grandly that outnumbers complaints...

and if you find yourself blessed enough to be in that position does the road, then "reading HN" is a problem that solves itself ;)

They made a couple mil off the steam release. It wouldn't have happened without the massive cult following, which only happened because it was free.

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