Yep. I’ve spoken to several small indies today who I speak to via email occasionally are not real happy about this “success story”, and almost want to just chuck it in and forget about the whole thing. There are actual games made by decent people who work hard, minus the gaudy, fugly UIs, 20 year dev spans and bat-shit personalities who are struggling to reach 500 sales over months and months who just feel like “fuck it all, what’s the point”. Can’t say i’m not sympathetic to their feelings.
One part of me is ok, thinking “hey, there is a market for creaky oldies on Steam” and that’s a good thing. As my latest game, an old-school RPG itself with a better UI (hey, configurable hotkeys even!) and no crippling bugs out of the gate, just managed to cross the 200 sales barrier and struggled to do so, tempers my joy a bit. Maybe that marketing person I spoke about was right. I almost want to email him and apologize…lol