The game's continued success could be in part due to the strong modding community that it has collected.
Indie first-person-terroriser Amnesia: The Dark Descent has raked in ten times the $360,000 it cost to produce, according to developer Frictional Games.
In a "21 months in" report posted on the studio's blog, Frictional Games co-founder Thomas Grip stated that optimistically, the game has sold 1.36 million units, including copies sold as part of the Valve Potato Sack and Humble Indie Bundle promotions. Excluding these offers, Amnesia: The Dark Descent sold 710,000 units on its own.
In terms of monthly sales, the game currently shifts 10,000 units at full price, even after nearly two years on the market.
'One would think that there is perhaps not much to be said this long after release, especially for a single player game with no built-in social features,' said Grip.
Grip attributes the persistent sales figures to the game's modding community, which have made the game the most popular game at ModDB as of writing, ahead of Half-Life 2 in second and Minecraft in third.
'Not only does this amount of user content lengthen the life of the game, it has also increased the amount of YouTube movies made with an Amnesia theme,' added Grip.
'It is quite clear that allowing users to create content is a feature worth putting time into.'
The developer also dismissed piracy as an issue faced by the company on the back of its strong sales figures.
Frictional Games' follow up title, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, is expected to be released in early 2013. It has been produced by Frictional and developed by Dear Esther creator The Chinese Room.
Frictional is also working on a
'super secret project' that will also be a first person horror title and will attempt to explore deeper themes than the Amnesia series.
17 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyGlad they made decent money out of this though, much prefer to see interesting original games over yearly re-release franchises, regardless of the budget.
thats me!
I do hope other developers take note to this. Moddable games are so much more fun, and generally better than most DLCs. It also keeps people buying the game way after its been released.
In other words, make a good game and people will buy it.
Allow people to mod it and people will continue to buy it.
Alternatively, take the more fashionable model and make a game that's similar to all the others, lock it down so that its un-moddable, charge for map packs, then moan that there is no money to made out of PC gaming.
Same here! I have it. Two copies, in fact. Haven't even dared to install it yet.
I'm a wuss, I'll admit that freely where Amnesia is concerned.
Delighted to hear that it's doing so well for the devs, though. I love stories like that.
Im confused :(
*Raises Hand* :)
If nothing mods give the creativity of the users a chance to show off their talent :)
i am :(
It wasn't scary, I was just bored and couldn't even get through the demo.
I don't like games that tell you how to enjoy them, i'll enjoy it on my own if it's a good game if you have to tell me then it's crap.
Hardly. These guys were already responsible for an outstanding game franchise before Amnesia.