"Dwarf Fortress": Cult classic sold over a million times on Steam

“Dwarf Fortress” has sold over a million copies on Steam. This was announced by publisher Kitfox Games in a post on Bluesky. The iconic construction game took around three and a half years to reach this milestone: “Dwarf Fortress” was not released on Steam until the end of 2023.

Dwarf Fortress has been around for much longer: The building game has been in development since 2002 and was always available for free before its Steam release. For the release on Valve's gaming platform, the American developer duo Tarn and Zach Adams hired additional employees, engaged a publisher in Kitfox and gave the game, which was previously based on ASCII characters, new graphics assets.

Only a small discount

To cover the increased costs and make a profit on the project close to their hearts after many years, the Adams brothers set a price of 29 euros. “Dwarf Fortress” kept to this price point almost all the time: Although the game was often available during discount campaigns, the maximum discount was only 20 percent – which corresponds to a price of around 23 euros. It can therefore be roughly estimated that Kitfox generated at least 25 million euros from Steam sales of “Dwarf Fortress” – before deductions for Steam operator Valve, which retains up to 30 percent of sales.

Around two months after the release of “Dwarf Fortress” on Steam, the developers commented on their financial situation for the first time in a forum post. At that time, they announced that they had already earned 7 million US dollars from the Steam release. However, just under half of this had to be deducted for taxes and business expenses, such as salaries.

No worries about healthcare and retirement

The fact that there was a commercial release of “Dwarf Fortress” at all was also due to the developer duo's health concerns: Zach Adams had to go to hospital because of skin cancer, the duo explained to the British Guardian. The costs of 10,000 US dollars were largely covered by his wife's insurance at the time. However, the experience showed the brothers how important financial security is. The USD 7 million raised in early 2023 was “enough for us to have solved the main health/retirement issues that worry the self-employed”, wrote developer Tarn Adams in the “Dwarf Fortress” forum at the time.

It's a rare insight into the financial situation of indie developers – even if the Dwarf Fortress team is in a much better position than the vast majority of independent teams due to the success of its build-up game. Even before the Steam release, the Adams brothers were earning around 15,000 US dollars a month, mainly from donations.

“Dwarf Fortress” is a mixture of dungeon crawler, strategy, base building and economic simulation that has been in development since 2002. Over two decades, “Dwarf Fortress” has built up a community that appreciates its challenging level of difficulty and depth of gameplay.

(dahe)