First of all, wow, holy cow! The flash sale was unexpected, but what was TRULY unexpected was the absolutely overwhelming influx of people purchasing the game.
When the sale started, I said I'd have a beer for every thousand sales we had. I'm not a drinker, so I soon regretted it.
https://twitter.com/alexpoysky/status/480061845454475264/photo/1
We stopped the game when we realized I would have VERY easily died.
Early into the Flash Sale, a post on Reddit quickly became popular. It was one that lended some VERY real and VERY acceptable criticism of whether or not one should be wary of purchasing our title.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/28np65/heads_up_be_very_wary_of_purchasing_pixel_piracy/
Not being one to shy away from criticism, and always attempting to be fair, I did not respond until AFTER the sale, at which point I simply stated my true feelings regarding the whole situation.
What I wasn't expecting was for the entire thread to show such unwaivering support. Mind you, this was a thread CRITICISING Pixel Piracy.
I never expected this much support. I never expected to do anything but make a game and hopefully provide a little bit of enjoyment for a few people, if only for the briefest of times.
xXBatmanXx wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 06:45:Incidentally he was answering the question of how much he gets per copy when he said steam doesn't want him to say (in other words the steam cut percentage is likely covered under NDA). The number of sales is allowed to be talked about.InBlack wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 05:40:
This guy is a riot, quote from Reddit:
Question, how many copies have they sold?
Alex:Steam doesn't want me to say, so I can say we've sold over one hundred thousand so far
A lot of indie developers show screen shots of their sales pages - it is very cool.
Creston wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 13:58:Verno wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 13:22:
That's straight from Bethesda though and they would know.
It isn't, though, right? It came from some website who claimed it came straight from Bethesda, and said website also claimed they got sales numbers from Steam. Neither of them give out sales numbers (in Bethesda's case at least not per platform.)just being on the Steam top10 list isn't a guarantee of millions of sales or something. I think the volume level of steam sales would surprise you. We've seen a few devs up near the top who say they sold 300,000 which is nothing to scoff at but certainly not millions.
That's for a dev who leads the sales in one week. Skyrim was in the top ten for TWO YEARS. DayZ reached a million sales after being the top seller for.. what, two months?
3 million copies simply doesn't add up. Sorry, but it's my pet peeve.
(If fucking Todd Howard would just admit that PC sales of Skyrim have been fucking gargantuan, I could let this matter rest already!!!)
Creston wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 13:58:
It isn't, though, right? It came from some website who claimed it came straight from Bethesda
That's for a dev who leads the sales in one week. Skyrim was in the top ten for TWO YEARS. DayZ reached a million sales after being the top seller for.. what, two months?
Verno wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 13:22:
That's straight from Bethesda though and they would know.
just being on the Steam top10 list isn't a guarantee of millions of sales or something. I think the volume level of steam sales would surprise you. We've seen a few devs up near the top who say they sold 300,000 which is nothing to scoff at but certainly not millions.
Verno wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 13:22:Creston wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 12:59:
And he's not in the top 10 in sales. That's why I keep saying that the belief that Skyrim only sold a few million copies on the PC is ridiculous, because the top sellers on Steam are selling hundreds of thousands of copies per polling interval (a week, I believe?)
That's straight from Bethesda though and they would know. The AAA base on the PC is considerably smaller than consoles and the consoles have a very good attach rate at $60, PC games tend to be more long tail sellers and at cheaper prices.
I bet its up to 3mil at this point but just being on the Steam top10 list isn't a guarantee of millions of sales or something. I think the volume level of steam sales would surprise you. We've seen a few devs up near the top who say they sold 300,000 which is nothing to scoff at but certainly not millions.
Creston wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 12:59:
And he's not in the top 10 in sales. That's why I keep saying that the belief that Skyrim only sold a few million copies on the PC is ridiculous, because the top sellers on Steam are selling hundreds of thousands of copies per polling interval (a week, I believe?)
InBlack wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 05:40:
This guy is a riot, quote from Reddit:
Question, how many copies have they sold?
Alex:Steam doesn't want me to say, so I can say we've sold over one hundred thousand so far
InBlack wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 05:40:
This guy is a riot, quote from Reddit:
Question, how many copies have they sold?
Alex:Steam doesn't want me to say, so I can say we've sold over one hundred thousand so far
Elf Shot The Food wrote on Jun 22, 2014, 13:19:
I wonder how he'd feel about piracy if the game was selling for $60?