Dwarf Fortress got its big graphics, tutorials, and mouse and keyboard controls update and has been released on Steam. It's the thing that started all those games like Rimworld and Oxygen Not Included, where you set the little men about to build and do your bidding in a base/fortress/trading/fighting world.
For those who don't know about it it's made by two brothers. For about fifteen years they've been improving it and iterating on it over and over, and what's possible within it is vast. It used to have simple ASCII graphics (up until this week) and you could only control it via keyboard. Also, it was available for free. Their only income was Patreon subscriptions and donations and the like. For well over a decade.
A few years back one of the brothers grew a tumour on his nose, it turned out to be cancerous and it was his wife's health insurance that covered the costs. Turns out cancer runs in the family and the other brother was at risk, but he only had a basic healthcare plan. They decided they'd update the graphics, add more quality of life stuff, put it on steam and charge what it's worth. And they were really apologetic about this. They just wanted to make their passion project and live a simple and humble life, but as they got older and more health stuff came up they realised they needed to have a proper income after 15+ years.
The game came out this week. It's less than thirty smackaroonies for one of the most detailed games of all time (in the US the Museum of Modern Art has it as one of their few video game purchases.) And now it appears their money worries are over because the game has made about $3m in a few days. After their publisher, Steam and the taxman takes a cut they're looking at maybe having made $500k each in a couple of days (with nearly two decades of work going into it.)
