The developers of Dwarf Fortress have finally struck gold (financially).

News

After all, dwarves like gold.

The newest Bay 12 Games financial report has shown a staggering increase in revenue, with revenues topping $7 million in January. Under the guise of Toady One, Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams revealed the good news.

“A little less than half goes to taxes and we continue to pay for staff and new business expenses and the like,” Adams explained in the forum post. “So it’s not all personal money but a lot of it, enough to solve the major health/retirement issues that are troubling to independent people and the future of football secured enough that we’re comfortable bringing it [community member turned programmer] Commit to working with the full code, and so on.”

The closing for the month, $7,230,123.58, not only dwarfs the previous four-month average of just under $15,000 (if you’ll pardon the pun); it’s literally more than 120 times the total for September through December combined.

The reason for this would of course be the rollout of Dwarf Fortress 1.0 in December. The management sim had been in development in one form or another since the early 2000s before it was announced that it would be coming to Steam with updated graphics and quality of life improvements. Response to the already solid foundation has been positive – in our test we gave it a 4.5 out of 5 – yet few could have predicted the type of bump it created.

In your January report, Bay 12 Games noted that the game sold nearly half a million copies in December alone. This brought their total sales for 2022 to $164,666.53, a 15-year high for the developer that was already completely wiped out in just one month of 2023.

Success stories like this are always nice to see, so we raise our mugs to the Bay 12 Games team. May their fortresses remain fortified for years to come!