Indie RPGs top Steam sales charts

GameBanshee caught this little gem from Gamepro, published this past Thursday:

The PC version of the Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII double pack from independent developer Zeboyd Games launched yesterday alongside Gaslamp Games’ charming roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor. All three are excellent games and well worth your time — cheap, too.

But apparently you don’t need me to tell you that, because the two packages have been leapfrogging each other for the top two slots on Steam’s Top Sellers list since yesterday. The developers are, as you might expect, delighted.

“We’re bouncing off the walls here,” said Cthulhu/Breath of Death developer Robert Boyd via Twitter. “I was reading over the Steam contract and it looks like sales data is considered confidential, so I can’t just share sales data whenever I feel like it like I used to. Given that [Cthulhu/Breath of Death has] been high up on the sales chart since it came out, you can probably make your own guesses on how it’s selling!”

“We’re… a little overwhelmed, and also going about with large grins on our faces,” added Nicholas Vining of Gaslamp Games. “Being #1 on Steam — even if we have been cruelly deposed (for now!) by the Curse of Cthulhu Saving the World — is quite the rush. We should ship games more often. Thank you all for your support and patronage; we’re looking forward to kicking it up to the next level.”

That’s some awfully impressive stuff. Given the extremely low price points that helped these games float to the top, I doubt that this is going to convince any AAA studios to stop their increasing tendency towards genre convergence and return to creating unique and diverse types of games.

What this does do, however, is provide a powerful argument that indie studios can do very well for themselves serving the niche markets that AAA studios have failed to serve. We already know that Jeff Vogel does quite well making old school wRPGs; this proves that indies can also sell gangbusters making jRPGs and roguelikes. Today is a good day for indie RPGs.