Darkest Dungeon is an undisputed crowdfunding success story. It pulled in $313,000 on Kickstarter, worked out the bugs in Early Access, released in good time, and turned out to be a really good game. So good that, following its release on the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita, it has now sold more than one million copies, an accomplishment that developer Red Hook Studios expressed gratitude for—and dug deeper into—in a recent blog post.
A whopping 94 percent of Darkest Dungeon's sales have thus far come from Steam, despite the game also being available on PSN, GOG, Humble, the OSX App Store, CDP.pl, SoftClub, and Nuuvem. Part of that great disparity is obviously thanks to Steam's popularity in general, but it also benefited from the Steam-exclusive Early Access release, which moved more than 50,000 copies in its first 24 hours.
And of course, being on Steam first means it's been there the longest: The Early Access launch happened on February 3, 2015, while GOG didn't get it until January 2016, and the PlayStation Network in September. "Sales [on PSN] have been decent so far (approximately 50k copies worldwide), but the recent launch accounts for the reason why the platform only represents a tiny amount of our cumulative sales to date," the studio wrote.
The blog post also touches on Darkest Dungeon's player counts, regional popularity, a bit of the game's history, and—most importantly—the studio's plans for the future. The first DLC, The Crimson Court, was recently slated for release in early 2017, and Red Hook said that official mod support is on the way as well. So is a possible mobile/tablet release and official merchandise, beginning with the final Kickstarter rewards, including art prints, art books, and dioramas, which it said will enter manufacturing soon. And in case there was any doubt, the studio also confirmed that it will make another game.
"'Game 2' hasn’t begun production yet, and this in no way means that we are done supporting or adding to Darkest Dungeon," Red Hook wrote. "But as long as you keep supporting what we do, we want to keep making things for you! It is not hyperbole to say that we are doing our dream jobs, and we love what we do."
