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Story by Stephany Nunneley

Sat, Jan 08, 2011 | 02:49 GMT

Amnesia: The Dark Descent moves 200K units since September

IGF finalist Frictional Games has announced that its dreary and quite scary horror title Amnesia: The Dark Descent has moved over 200K units since its release in September 2010.

According to the firm’s latest financial blog post, this figure includes online sales as well as physical copies sold at retail in Russia.

“This is a tremendous amount and more than we ever thought we would [sell],” reads the company blog post. “Our ‘dream estimates’ before release was something around 100k, and to be able to double that feels insane.

“Note that more than half of these units have been sold at a discounted price (with as much has 75 percent of the price off), so the total earnings are not as much as it first sounds. Still, we are in incredible good financial situation right now. Also, the daily sales are still quite high and the average has not dropped below 200 units yet. This means that we can still pay all daily costs from these sales alone, allowing us to invest the other earnings into the future.

“With these figures at hand, we must confess that it gives us new confidence for the PC. The sales that we have had (and are having) are more than enough to motivate developing a game with the PC as the main (and even only) platform. Based on what we have seen, the online PC market is just getting bigger and bigger, and we are convinced we are far from the end of this growth.

“We think that other developers that consider making their game exclusive to a console might want to think again.”

Friction notes that had it used a publisher and “sold according to current figures”, it would not been in the financial state it is now. Instead, it would “probably just have paid back” a publishing advance, and “just recently been receiving royalties at a much lower rate, like 25 percent of what we get now”.

“This does not mean that publishers are evil, just that one should think carefully before signing up for anything,” reads the statement. “Releasing a game without any financial backing or help with marketing is quite a struggle, but if you pull it off it is well worth the effort.”

Amnesia is currently up for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, the winner of which will be announced during GDC in March. Other games nominated for this particular award include: SpyParty, Desktop Dungeons, Minecraft, and Nidhogg.

Frictional’s game has also been nominated for a Technical Excellence Award, as well as Excellence in Audio bringing its total nominations to three.

Best of luck to them. It’s a damn good game, in our book.