Steam sale saves british developers

NZXT30

NZXT30

NZXT30

Soldato
Joined
3 Aug 2010
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a very interesting story:
Despite a string of cult successes like Uplink, Darwinia and Defcon (pictured), the British developers had run into some tough times recently, and had gone from being a "proper" studio, with an office and staff, to having to fire most of their workers, sell their furniture, move out of their office and code from their bedrooms.

In desperation, one day they decided to add some Steam achivements to Defcon. Doing so meant Valve gave the team some promotion on Steam, and that promotion turned into sales.
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what happened next...
Valve okayed the promotion and even though it didn't focus on DEFCON we were happy that we had achieved our core objective. This was the game-changer. When we started Introversion we'd had a string of successes and believed we were undefeatable, but it was a long time since we'd had a victory and we really needed one. Right on cue, Valve delivered. The promo exceeded all of our expectations and when combined with our low burn rate (no office or staff now) we had gone from being fearful about paying our mortgages to having a year's operating capital in the bank.
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http://kotaku.com/5620259/steam-sale-saves-developer

for such small developers a single steam sale can be a matter of life and death. so next time before you spend £30 on the next blockbuster, super advertised multiplatform game make sure you first check if there are any good steam sales.
 
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Didn't like Darwinia myself but can see why others might. If only 3D Realms did something like this. We might have seen DNF in some form :(
 
uplink is brilliant


need to get some people together and play defcon online some time
ever tried it properly.


would be good saying "no no I'd never nuke you steve" on vent as the missiles fly over the Atlantic to him
 
Darwinia, Multiwinia and Defcon are all awsome games. Never actually got into Uplink but perhaps I'll pick it up to help out the devs a bit more.
 
Tefal said:
need to get some people together and play defcon online some time
ever tried it properly.


would be good saying "no no I'd never nuke you steve" on vent as the missiles fly over the Atlantic to him
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I'd definitely be up for this. Played it at a LAN many years ago and it was brilliant fun, the broken alliances and WHOOPS I PRESSED THE LAUNCH BUTTON :D
 
I've still never managed to complete Darwinia, it's too taxing for my meagre brain :p

Defcon, however, is a fantastic game!
 
PapaLazaru said:
Just downloading the Defcon demo. if it looks like it will keep me busy for more than a couple of hours, I will purchase it. :)
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You can change the game speed on the fly, and one of the speeds takes ~8 hours, designed to see you through a shift at work :p

The best bit is LAN/ online with friends.. There's not much better than stabbing your friend/ally in the back with a few nukes :D
 
This is great news for them, while valve are obviously in it for the money as well this shows what a good platform steam is for supporting indie publishers. I personally find indie games can be great for ideas as they are not playing the 'omg best not change it it has to be a block buster' routine that the big boys get stuck into.
 
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