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