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Creator of iconic puzzle game says anniversary remaster 'sold like dog s**t,' and now his company 'can't afford to pay anyone'
The Anniversary Edition of Braid, an iconic puzzle-platform game, has sold poorly, leaving the developer uncertain about the company's future. Despite positive reviews, sales have been disappointing on multiple platforms.
The creator behind an iconic puzzle-platform game called Braid says the anniversary remaster "sold like dog shit compared to what we need to make for the company to survive."
As chronicled by the appropriately named 'Blow Fan' on YouTube (thanks, Knoebel), Braid creator Jonathan Blow has tackled the question of how the indie game's remaster is getting on – several times, in fact. As you'll see from the video, Blow has given regular updates on the game while on Twitch, expect the answer gets progressively bleaker the further we get from launch.
Blow first touches on the topic six days after the Braid Anniversary Edition's launch, saying “It’s a little too early” to tell how the game is doing as most games enjoy a bump when released – It's the comedown from the peak that tells you if you'll get a steady flow of income. So how did that go? Well, as of 34 days from the Anniversary Edition’s release, "dog shit."
Blow says that if you compare sales to "nostalgic things" like "the Jeff Minter game that’s on Steam," then it's not done badly at all. "But," he adds, "it has still sold like dog shit compared to what we need to make for the company to survive. So the future is uncertain, let’s put it that way. It hasn’t been good. Hasn’t been good.”
Things only get worse, too. Blow says sales have been "utterly terrible" in a clip posted 69 - nice - days after release. The veteran developer then says that releasing the game on so many platforms "made a difference," but the problem is most of those platforms are "f***ing dead now.”
“Steam is easily still our biggest platform,” he adds. “There would have been something to be said for just not porting to half those platforms."
In the final clip, coming 74 days after release, he says that sales remain bad and that no one is working on the compiler for a new programming language he's working on because "we can’t afford to pay anyone, because the sales are bad. The whole game industry is having a hard time.
Looking across various storefronts, Braid's anniversary edition has gone down well with those who played it, and Metacritic gives it an 86 score thanks to "generally favorable" reviews from 15 outlets. As Blow says, though, "the whole game industry is having a hard time."