Non-standard projects of independent teams can also earn millions. The British studio Introversion Software announced that its prison simulator Prison Architect sold 2 million copies, earning $ 25 million.
“This year’s Steam sale was the largest for us of all time,” the developers of the studio, whose staff consists of ten people, comment on the event. The team also clarifies that the game earned this amount only from PC/Mac/Linux platforms. Revenue from recently released versions for consoles is not included here.
The history of the project is far from standard. In September 2012, Introversion Software, famous for such games as Uplink, Darwinia and DEFCON, offered the audience to finance the project, which was at the alpha stage at that time. On pre-sales, the game earned more than $9 million by the end of 2013.
The official release of the project took place only in October of last year – 2015. But a month before that – in September 2015 – the developers reported sales of 1.25 million copies and revenues of $ 19 million copies.
As we can see, it took another 10 months for the game to earn another $6 million.
A curious fact: Introversion Software did not use popular crowdfunding services to raise funds for the further development of the game. Pre-orders for the game went through the official website of the game.
Source: Gamesindustry